Monty’s Musings

Sorry for the delay, I know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath for this blog to come back to life.

I should have written prior to this, but since that didn’t happen, it’s now fun to go back and see where this team has come so far this season, just past the half way point.

A quick catch-up for this season, the regular season has been pretty much abysmal, 5-9-3 (18 points), and 5^th worst in MLS overall (points per game). The USOC was our normal pathetic experience, with barely any subs available and getting beat easily by RBNY’s B team 2-0 on the road. And as we should now be getting used to, a nice run in the SuperLiga by the Revs (the only MLS team to win out during the first three runs of this tournament). The Revs win in PKs over Puebla on Wed, Aug 4^th puts them into the Finals of the tournament (Wed, Sept 1^st), after having won it in 2008 and lost in the semis (at home) in 2009.

What else has happened? Ralston signed back with the team. Then he got injured. Then he retired. Twellman was finally put on the injury list, opening up his roster spot. Mike Videira was constantly injured, and finally cut. Joseph Niouky, just signed in February from the Senegalese league has now been cut. Edgaras Jankauskas was injured. Then he was injured again. He’s played in all of 1 game this season. Emmanuel Osei was injured and picked up a staph infection. Kheli Dube was recently injured. Darrius Barnes was injured earlier in the season. Matt Reis didn’t come back from his injury till June. Shalrie Joseph barely played in the first 20% of the season due to an injury. Do you see a common word sticking out in this paragraph? Yep, it’s been that kinda year (once again) for the Revs.

And then there was more. Shalrie Joseph wound up leaving the team for “personal reasons.” Took a while to figure out exactly what happened, but eventually we found out that Joseph (easily one of my favorite 5 players ever to wear our Red, White and Blue) liked to … ahem … toke up. Unfortunately though, the team lost him for a while, and got to learn once again, that this team really is nothing without Shalrie playing. And all during this time, the Revs attendance is dropping faster than Wall Street currently is.

Apparently the Revs Front Office finally realized they need help at the forward position, and signed two players in August, 31-year-old Ilija Stolica (last played for Montenegro’s FC Budocnost) and 22-year-old Roberto Linck, aka Betu (Romania’s CSM Râmnicu Vâlcea). Will they help, I have no idea whatsoever. Too early to tell on that part, but nothing against the two, they’re not quite at the name level of Thierry Henry, Nery Castillo, Rafa Marquez (the dirt-bag), etc. Hopefully they can help this team make a season that had been pretty much rubbish till the MLS All-Star break.

So where are we now? The Revs are currently on a 7-game unbeaten streak (5 wins, 2 ties), and 2-0-1 in league play in the same time frame, with two of those games against other dregs of MLS. I’ve honestly believed for a while that this team needs to get to 40 points to make the playoffs, and that leaves them needing about 1.7 points per game for the rest of the season. It’s definitely doable, but it’s not going to be easy. The Revs have given themselves a lifeline in the last 7 games (including SuperLiga), having given up just two goals in that time frame. That’s the mark of a solid defense, which I had expected this team to have this season. On the other hand, they’ve scored just 1 goal in 6 of those 7 games (a total of 8), the mark of a team that has relatively little offense, but again that was expected.

The Revs have an interesting situation for the rest of the season. The defense should stay solid as long as there are no further injuries, and Matt Reis continues his great play. Will there be enough offense though to cover for any mistakes made on the other end? The Revs have seen a very nice improvement from Sainey Nyassi on the wing, and his crosses have gotten better. The other Gambian Kenny Mansally has finally taken himself out of Coach Steve Nicol’s doghouse and seems to have picked up his game a bit as well. Kheli Dube though can’t find the back of the net, no matter how hard he tries (and he’s definitely trying). Zach Schilawski has just 5 goals in league play this year, with 3 of them coming in one game, which is just not enough. There are two bright spot on the offensive end though, the crosses being sent in by Chris Tierney as well as the play of Marko Perovic. It’s pretty easy to say that without those two, a majority of the goals in the last 7 games wouldn’t have been scored. Can Stolica or Betu help pick up the pace on the offensive side?

Finally not to blow off this season, but I’m actually intrigued by the Revolution’s possibilities for 2011. There’s already a good core of young kids that have established themselves (or are currently doing so) for the Revs to build around. With my expectation that there’s no way Twellman is re-signed for the $400+k he’s gotten the last two seasons, and with Jankauskus, Niouky, et al being removed, there’s about $1m worth of cap space the Revs could potentially have to get themselves from a rebuilding team to a contender very soon.

So there’s two things I can promise you … the rest of the season will be an intriguing one for the Revs if they can find their stride offensively and I won’t wait quite this long to post another blog.

Comments are appreciated!