HOUSTON – New England Revolution coach Jay Heaps handed several players a chance to shine in the 2-0 defeat at Houston on Saturday night, but they didn't quite work out as he had hoped.
Many of those changes were forced upon Heaps by injury (Flo Lechner and Lee Nguyen), international duty (Ryan Guy) or matchup issues (Diego Fagundez), but they still occurred and still handed a starting XI berth to the likes of Fernando Cárdenas, Benny Feilhaber and Dimitry Imbongo.
In the final accounting, he said the Revs as a team just couldn't take that opportunity for the entire 90 minutes.
“No excuses,” Heaps told MLSsoccer.com after the game. “We had guys that were getting a chance tonight. For some of that, they did well. They needed to do a little bit more there at the end, be a little bit better at the end.”
Heaps did parcel out some praise for the first-half showing and for the performance of under-fire goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth during the Dynamo's second-half barrage.
“I thought Bobby had a nice game,” Heaps said. “He made some nice saves. I have to go back and look at the tape on the goals, but, from my vantage point, he did everything could.”
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All of those efforts ultimately went for naught on a night when the Revs started well and faded in the second half.
“It's a disappointing result,” Heaps said. “I think guys in there should know that it wasn't good enough all the way around. Soccer's 90 minutes. When the referee is against you, the crowd is against you, the team's against you and they're not calling penalties when they should call penalties, you have to rise up. That's a challenge.”
