On a night where 54,000 fans communicated loudly with the players on the field, New England Revolution head coach Steve Nicol felt his team didn't do a good enough job of communicating between themselves in its 2-1 victory against FC Dallas.
"We need to improve in our communication on the field," Nicol said. "Our communication tonight, from where we sat, was hopeless. We have too many people running out of position, running to the ball too early and leaving holes. The biggest problem tonight was that the communication was obviously just not there."
After the first half, Nicol could have hardly had any problems with the communication or anything else on the field.
New England entered halftime up 2-0 after an early goal from Adam Cristman and a Steve Ralston penalty kick. The Revs held much of the play, exploiting the pace of Sainey Nyassi down the right flank and dominating the play in midfield.
But the team has struggled to cobble together 90 minutes this season, and the Revs couldn't match their first-half performance in the second stanza.
"In the second half, we (gave) the ball away needlessly and they kept coming back down our throats," Revolution goalkeeper Matt Reis said. "We have to give ourselves a bit of a break and defend for 45 minutes. We have to get the ball up the field and hold it and make them chase it."
Instead, Reis did most of the chasing, making eight second-half saves on his way to a career-high 10 stops. It's not the first time Reis has saved the Revolution this season, but Nicol said the situation has become untenable.
"We're relying at the moment on commitment and attitude and players stepping up big time," Nicol said. "Matt (Reis) stepped up today again and we can only get away with that for so long. We have to sharpen up on the other aspects of the game."
Arturo Alvarez finally beat Reis in stoppage time to set up a tense finish. Reis said his team needed to be more consistent in order to avoid the late-game tension.
"We're putting together some solid team performances, but we'd like to be a little more consistent to make the game a little easier on ourselves," Reis said.
Nicol thinks his team needs to focus on keeping possession in order to avoid those late-game letdowns.
"We always talk about keeping the ball and we just have to improve," Nicol said. "If we can improve on keeping the ball then we're going to be strong but when we keep turning the ball over teams are coming at us."
Kyle McCarthy is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
