The Red Bulls take on local rivals, the New England Revolution, Friday night in what will be a contest of struggling teams at the moment. As has been alluded to previously, the Red Bulls have failed to win in their last six outings. With many starters away for the Gold Cup and Jan Gunnar Solli out injured, it will be a relatively makeshift side the Red Bulls put out against the Revs. Due to the fact that there aren’t too many other options, I expect the lineup to look similar to how it did last weekend against Columbus.
Matt Kassel, who is a Red Bulls youth academy product, will likely get his first MLS start at right back with the injury to Solli. The rest of the back line will probably look the same with the partnership of Stephen Keel and Carlos Mendes in the middle and Roy Miller on the left. The midfield will probably look the same as well with Mehdi Ballouchy and Austin da Luz out wide and Teemu Tainio and Joel Lindpere in the center. Hopefully Luke Rodgers can continue his good form up top alongside Thierry Henry. The two could pose enough of a problem for the Revolution defense to get the three points. The Red Bulls have found the back of the net consistently lately, scoring eight goals in their last five games. However, they have also conceded frequently, giving up almost two goals a game in their last five games. Hopefully now that this new back four has a little more experience playing with each other, particularly Mendes and Keel, they can start to clean it up in the back and concede less.
The Revs come in to this game with some bad form as well, having lost their last three games. Furthermore, the Revs have yet to win on the road this season, picking up four losses and two draws thus far. The team is missing an important piece with the injury to Benny Feilhaber. Things could be worse as Shalrie Joseph, another critical player for the Revs, recently changed his mind and decided to skip the Gold Cup to help the Revs climb out of their current sixth place standing in the Eastern Conference. The Revs have had trouble scoring lately, only hitting the back of the net twice in their last six games. Without a consistent goal scorer up top and the absence of Feilhaber, its hard to see exactly where the goals will come from for the Revs. This will be helpful for the Red Bulls whose defense, as mentioned above, has been shaky to say the least of late.
All in all, as any rivalry is, I think it will be a hard fought game on Friday night. With so many absences for the Red Bulls, I don’t expect them to get in as much of their possession and rhythm that was so effective earlier in the year. At this point though, I’m sure they would take the three points no matter how they came. It will certainly be a hard challenge for the Revs away and the Red Bulls should be confident of finally getting a win at home. They did well last weekend and nearly came away with all three points, and I expect on Friday they will finish the job and walk away with the win. The game will be live on Fox Soccer Channel at 8:30 PM eastern time so tune in if you have the chance.
(image courtesy of Getty Images)
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
