The New England Revolution take their 6-6-6 record to Houston this weekend for the first of three difficult road games before returning to home pastures to play eight of their final 11 regular season matches at Gillette Stadium.
Steve Nicol's side remains a team that has scuffled its way through the season to date. The Revolution have yet to win three consecutive games, or lose three in a row. They have scored 24 goals, while conceding the same amount. It is a record that smacks, as one member of the club's front office put it this week, of "symmetry" -- though not necessarily an attractive one.
However, despite their spluttering form, the Revolution still finds themselves in second place in the Eastern Conference, with only D.C. United having managed to pull away from the pack. Indeed, the Revs have a four-point cushion between themselves and Chicago. Should it pick up points on the road at Houston, Kansas City and Chivas in the next three weeks, New England will be in a good position to at least consolidate the runner-up spot going into the MLS Cup Playoffs.
"We are in second place and we have to keep doing what we are doing," said Clint Dempsey this week. "The only thing that matters, with the way the league is set up, is playoffs. Sometimes that's a bad thing and sometimes that's a good thing. We've just got to play. It's not rocket science; we just have to go out and get results."
After missing last Friday's defeat to Real Salt Lake through suspension, Dempsey will return to the starting lineup against Dynamo and expects to have many family and friends in attendance at Robertson Stadium to cheer him on in his home state, against a side that has settled quickly into its new surroundings.
"I'm looking forward to being in the state of Texas," said Dempsey. "I'm happy that (Houston) is doing well. It's good for the city, it's good for soccer, it's good for keeping the team there."
One Texan that will not be in uniform for the Revs is Daniel Hernandez, who has had a setback in his recovery from an ankle sprain. However, the New England injury list continues to reduce in size with club captain Joe Franchino in contention for at least a place on the bench and Pat Noonan looking more and more match-fit since he came back from hamstring and back problems in Chicago on June 8.
Noonan will start on Saturday as part of the three-man forward line that Nicol began the season with, playing alongside Dempsey in support of Taylor Twellman. It will be the first time the attacking trio has featured in the Revs' starting lineup since April 15. Nicol is on record as saying that his main reason for utilizing the 3-4-3 formation is to try and isolate Noonan and Dempsey against defenders in one-on-one situations.
However, other attacking areas must not be neglected and a feature of Nicol's postgame comments following last week's 3-1 loss to Real Salt Lake and the midweek friendly draw with Celtic was his frustration that, on the many occasions his side got into good crossing positions in the opponent's defensive third, the quality of the final ball was not good enough.
Defensively, the Revolution used the Celtic game to work on eliminating some of the things that allowed Salt Lake to score three goals from just five shots last week. The backline of Jay Heaps, Michael Parkhurst and James Riley have been working on things in training to ensure their cohesion is better and that, in the words of their coach, "the really straightforward stuff that we messed up on Friday" is avoided in the future.
"(We worked on) stepping when we need to out of the box and opening up the gap to let (Matt) Reis be able to come out on crosses," said Riley. "It was minor things which (Nicol) is very good at. He brought us in after training and told us that he was going to work on our line and being cohesive and knowing when to step and when to drop."
Riley and his colleagues at the back will certainly have their hands full against Brian Ching, who has 10 goals in 11 games this season and is well supported by Dwayne De Rosario, Alejandro Moreno and the in-form Brad Davis.
However, Houston is also capable of scoring goals from any position, as the Revs found to their cost when the two sides met in Foxborough on May 27. The home side looked set to ride Steve Ralston's goal to victory, only to be pegged back by Ryan Cochrane's 85th-minute leveler.
Andrew Hush is a contributor to MLSnet.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Soccer or its clubs.
