The Shutout Record Concludes

Our shutout record ends at 726 minutes and 7 games, but our unbeaten streak continues at 11 games. I'm glad we set the record, but hopefully now we can focus on the more important record: our winning record.

The winning column won't be augmented after today's match, despite our 3 goals. It seems 3 goals isn't enough versus Revs+Kevin Stott. Kevin Stott is a new prospect the Revs were trying out. He wore red in this match while the Revs wore their traditional blue.

There is something about Steve Nicol's soccer philosophy that I find to be absolutely pedantic and even negative. With such a bevy of talent at his disposal and though playing at home, this product of Scotland still has his team hold back and play the counter. With a 3-5-2 I would expect better domination of the midfield and a more attacking poise. Instead, I thought NE looked to be the inferior team, just as when they beat us here in Houston at the beginning of the season.

(As an aside, isn't Mo Johnston also Scottish? Why are these two unimaginative MLS coaches diametrically opposed to the philosophy held by other Scotsmen on the field and on the sidelines? Dominic Kinnear is a great MLS coach with a positive style of play, and Sir Alex Ferguson is great by most any standard.)

That's not to say that the Revs didn't look dangerous. In the first half, the Dynamo (despite being on the road) took an aggressive stance in the hope of attaining victory. We controlled possession and we pushed forward, and had several forays into the penalty box, albeit with few actual shots on goal. This aggressive stance left us vulnerable at times and, but for bad finishing by the Revs and solid goalkeeping by Onstad, we could have easily been down a goal due to New England's effective Route 1 tactics.

An excellent finish by Noonan (after poor defending and wasteful begging for a foul by Robinson) ended our shutout streak. New England gained some confidence from this and attempted to pass a little at times, but still relied on the counter, and there were often more than the "3" of the 3-5-2 clogging up their box. Hey, if you're going to play a 4-4-2 or 5-4-1, call it what it is at least.

D-Ro helped turn things around with his GOTW candidate from out of the blue in the second half. He found his space between the midfield and the back line, and a little space is all he needs to make game-changing plays. But moments later Cochrane drifts away from Twellman in our box, and Twellman (the pouty Dan Marino of the MLS) can usually tuck away freebies when he's not in a USMNT uniform.

Ngwenya looked the most dangerous Dynamo most of the match. He had the ball in the box on numerous occasions. I bet he had few actual shots on goal, but he got off several passes through the legs of defenders in the box, but the passes unfortunately missed their targets. He found Ching around the 60th minute to tie us up again. And Ching gets his 2nd and our 3rd just a minute later.

Enter Kevin Stott. I've got to say that the handball call against D-Ro was dodgy at best. The ball hit D-Ro in the chest, and it's questionable whether it actually hit his arm, but if it DID hit his arm, it was incidental and did not merit a PK. Great save by Onstad on the kick, and yes there was definite encroachment by our players. Technically, that is against the LOTG, so it's hard to argue the decision to take the kick again (bogus as the PK award was in the first place), but the fact is that there was no rebound for our encroaching players to intercept, so we gained no advantage from the encroachment, thus a re-kick is just a typical "letter of the law versus spirit of the law" situation. Unfortunately, Kevin Stott's spirit and decision-making was all sided against the Dynamo.

This is the first time we've given up more than 2 goals this season (not counting the 5 versus Pachuca in the second half of the aggregate CONCACAF Champions' Cup series with them). Last season, we only allowed two teams to score 3 on us: FC Dallas (we won 4-3 on May 6) and Colorado (a 3-3 draw on October 14). That's a testament to our defense. Obviously, we've never lost when we've scored 3 or more goals, but oddly, we've also never lost a MLS match when our opponent has scored more than 2 goals. Let's not test that record.

As for this past game: We have to be content with the fact that we got a point on the road and that we played the more exciting and imaginative soccer, and we did so we our wings clipped (Jaqua started on one wing, and Holden had his second sub-par game in a row, though it wasn't necessarily a poor performance). In fact, we tend to display more exciting and positive play than more than most of our MLS opponents ... even when we're on the road.

Now we take a nearly 2-week break from MLS play as we gear up for the inaugural SuperLiga. It would do credit to the club to do well versus our Mexican opponents (and DC as well), but we must guard against allowing our efforts versus international opponents to affect our domestic play, like we saw after the CONCACAF Champions' Cup.