The New England Revolution and the Philadelphia Union battled to a 0-0 draw on Saturday night in front of 11,841 fans at Gillette Stadium. The draw extended the Revolution winless streak to 10 games, the longest in the club’s 17-year history.
New England was dealt some bad news before kick off when they announced that top goalscorer Saer Sene suffered a torn left anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in Wednesday’s match against Chivas USA and will miss the remainder of the 2012 season. Big blow for the Revs as Sene is the only consistent scoring threat they have.
After conceding six goals in their previous two games, it was apparent early on, that New England coach Jay Heaps had preached to his team not the concede. The downside of that approach, was that when the Revs did attack, there was often nobody in the box to meet the cross.
As the first half progressed the Philadelphia Union midfield started to impose its will on the Revs midfield, and start to control the game. Danny Cruz, Gabriel Farfan and Antoine Hoppenot all created half chances before Amobi Okugo hit the crossbar late from a Cruz corner.
To show how dominate the Union were in the first half, Philadelphia had a Barcelona like 69.5% possession. For the full 90 minutes, the Union enjoyed 65% possession.
The second half was more of the same. The Revs offered nothing going forward and the Union continued to miss good chances, with Matt Reis making several outstanding saves to keep New England in the game.
This was probably the poorest game I have seen at Gillette in a couple of years. New England seemed devoid of ideas going forward while it was easy to see why Philadelphia have scored only one goal in the last 352 minutes of play.
Next up for New England is the Columbus Crew on Wednesday night. Can the Revs end their winless streak against the Crew?
