Monday, October 24, 2016

And That's All She Wrote




It was meaningless in terms of the future of 2016. There would be no more games to play for going forward. Nothing more to work toward in the short term. But that didn't stop the Revs from going out with a bang. 

With a 3-0 win on the last day of the season, the New England Revolution ended the 2016 season in a style we had all hoped to see for than the last month or two. But before we get into all that, there are highlights from this season finale. 

First, the lineup. I said last time that Brad should start without remembering that his red card would mean he would have a 1-game suspension. That's a Jimbo on my part, I'll wear that. So Cody Cropper got the start and his first taste of MLS action. Along the back line you had JoGo, Farrell and Woodberry. Gershon Koffie was back in the midfield with Caldwell, Fagundez, Rowe and Nguyen. Agudelo and Kamara were the attackers. Truth be told, I didn't watch this game closely because of the Patriots, so I haven't a clue as to how this team actually lined up for most of the game. If it was a 3-man backline, I like that experiment. The defense sucks anyway, so why not take one out and utilize another attacker or midfield presence to hold possession? 

Fagundez got it going with a beauty of a free kick. 


Set pieces really should be our bread and butter given the talent. Guys like Tierney and Nguyen are so good at whipping them into the box or putting them on net, Fagundez is good with his shot as evidenced here. Then you have Kamara and Juan near the net to poach. Rowe is a good option on a lay off to get something going quickly. So many options to have to defend.

Juan doing Juan things.

Nice run and the finish with the left peg. There's a lot to say about Juan later, but for now I'll just say I dearly hope this carries over into next season.

Kei puts there nail in the coffin.

The short pass from Fagundez and Kei Kamara with a fantastic finish using the outside of his right foot and a less than ideal angle.

And he got a yellow card for twerking.


And with that, the 2016 New England Revolution season came to an end. This is normally where I would talk about the changes and adjustments to be made for the next game, but without one I am at somewhat of a loss as to what to write here.

The official attendance for the finale was 39, 587, just short of the 40, 000 mark projected. And the Revs put on a show for them. And that was both a gift and a curse. Obviously they left on a good note, shutting out a playoff team and scoring three of their own. But it was a painful reminder of what this team, this season, could have been. They finished in 7th place, tied in points with Philly for the final playoff spot in the East, and losing out due to Goal Differential. And the team knew they had so much more to give as well. Here are some post-game comments via the Revs website:

-Juan Agudelo (on potential playoff damage): "That’s what I was thinking the whole game. We’re such a good team. We could’ve gone so far. It’s very disappointing that it’s all come to an end."

-More Agudelo: "Our season was relying on the Chicago game (last weekend) and we didn’t do well that game.Our season ended today on a positive note, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t the game that we needed to win."

-Jay Heaps:"It’s disappointing that we waited too long to really find ourselves and express ourselves throughout the last part of the season,” said head coach Jay Heaps, who saw the Revs struggle through a 2-8-2 stretch in the middle of the campaign. “Five (wins) out of seven is really good, but we just didn’t do enough."

Being a post-game blog, I want to stick to this game specifically, so I'll be expanding on more general post-season thoughts and reflection in a separate post, likely going up tomorrow.

Man of the Match

The sublime opening goal and slick pass to set up Kei gives Diego Fagundez the final MotM of the season. 

As I said, post-mortem coming tomorrow to tie up loose ends. One last postgame victory song, let it rip.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)