Chivas Knocks Revs on Their Backside

The homecoming for UCLA alum Benny Feilhaber was not the victory tour I was hoping for, to say the least. Last week New England played a team known for its offense and won a shootout against a porous defense. Chivas coach Robin Fraser, a former defender himself, has been working to solidify their defense. Chivas had strung together an unbeaten streak but not produced more than one win out of six games played. So, in this loss we went from being 3 points ahead of Chivas to even at 9 points each in the standings.

With Benny’s arrival in New England came the suggestion that we would show Chivas exactly what they has passed on. Instead, we learned why they passed. Fraser has given Chivas a more possession and defensive character. I still think that Feilhaber and the other pieces assembled on this Revolution roster will be successful, but on this night Chivas was more successful.

Lyoto Machida knocked out Randy Couture with a front kick to the chin Saturday night at UFC 129. That first goal by Chivas had a similar affect on the Revolution – it sent them sprawling. The game opened up which provided some entertaining end to end action. The frantic pace was always going to favor the team with the lead. The best way to slow a game’s tempo is through possession. While Benny Feilhaber brings great touch and control to the ball, Ousmane Dabo and Marko Perovic were missed out there.

The New England Revolution have played from behind this year. Their early run of ties and that win against DC United, though, all featured early goals by the Revs. This line up from New England did not play from behind well. How many different starting lineups have the Revs used through 8 games this season? It feels like 20 at this point. Settling that starting lineup would help the younger role players on this team settle down in a game like this one.

With the starting goalkeeper out as well as some of our better on-the-ball players we lost the possession game to Chivas USA. They combined for better opportunities and converted those opportunities into goals. This was a disappointing result for New England. I still have hope that this team can compete in the playoffs. Despite the possession shortcomings in this lineup we did see a few effective crosses from Domi, Japansese-movie-monster sized influence from Shalrie Joseph, and Lekic is still getting into threatening positions. Keeping the ball so that effective crosses connect with Lekic for shots or to distort our opponents defense will help create more scoring opportunities.

After chasing the ball and the game all over the Home Depot Center field Saturday night I suspect the guys will be doing more running in practice this week. Hopefully they can speed up and sharpen up their combination play. Keeping the ball against Colorado next week will be the best way to keep that gigantic forward line of theirs out of our goal box.

(image courtesy of revolutionsoccer.net)