New England Revolution rue miss chances on Saturday night

Saturday night was supposed to be a great night for Revolution fans.

Andrew Farrell was being honored, Taylor Twellman was in the building, Gustavo Bou made his return to the lineup, and the Columbus Crew sent out a sub-par starting XI. It was a match that had three points written all over it.

But that wasn’t in the cards for the Revolution as they would only walk away with a single point after drawing with the Crew at Gillette Stadium.

It wasn’t for a lack of opportunities. New England had 33 shots (seven on target) along with an Expected goals (xG) of 2.88. The Revs got plenty of goal scoring chances, they just failed to follow through on them.

Carles Gil, Tajon Buchanan, and Gustavo Bou all had the potential to score goals that would have given New England the lead on Saturday night. These guys were just not clinical enough in the final third.

Bruce Arena was asked about what can be done to fix the lack of finishing and he seems to be open to suggestions.

“What would you suggest? Tell them to shoot on goal? That’s a starting point,” Arena said.

Maybe it was just an off night for the Revs? It certainly looked like that as New England failed to convert on chance after chance.

For Brandon Bye, there isn’t anything specific that can be done to fix the finishing issues.

“I think it is what it is,” Bye said. “I think the positives are that we created those chances, and that’s what we’ll look at, for sure.”

But should this be cause for concern for Revolution fans? If they play like this in the playoffs, they could see their season come to an end far too soon.

Midfielder Tommy McNamara hopes that the team can learn from this as they prepare to make an MLS Cup run.

“No, it’s just about being focused and concentrated and being in the moment,” McNamara said. “Sometimes these things happen. Of course, like I said it’s better to happen now then if we get into the playoffs or when we get into the playoffs to happen in a playoff game. So, we just need to make sure that we’re prepared to be ruthless in these games and in this final end of the season where teams are desperate, desperate, desperate for points and into the playoffs you need to be ruthless. When you get chances, you need to take them and you need to put the game away when you have them, and on the flip side, you can’t give nothing away and so it’s a lesson for us to be ruthless in moments.”

With a mid-week matchup against the Chicago Fire coming up on Wednesday, hopefully New England can put this game on the back burner and start slotting away goals like they have been this season.