9/11/08
| Postgame Quotes: Revolution 4, Chivas USA 0 |
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Postgame quotes after the New England Revolution defeated Chivas USA 4-0 at Gillette Stadium on Thursday, September 11, 2008.
NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION HEAD COACH STEVE NICOL
On the result
"Yeah, it was really close today. It shouldn’t have been. You know with three good opportunities in the first half, we should have scored, should have made it a whole lot easier. Twellman had a couple of chances and Ralston was clean through on goal as well, and we could have made it a lot easier for ourselves. The pleasing thing at the end is it was good to get another striker on and get us back in good shape. We got Mansally on and Shalrie dropped back, and Ralston dropped back in and we looked a lot better. That was good to see that."
On whether tonight was his ideal lineup
"I wouldn’t say the lineup [was ideal], just the shape of the team. The shape of the team was much better."
On Ralston’s influence on the game
"He is a huge influence on and off the field and to have him play again is great. You see the quality he brings and it’s a strange thing, but it seems a couple of weeks off has energized him and he’s got his legs back. We had more legs than they had, and we understand where they are looking at it from and it looks as if we had more legs tonight. Hopefully we will continue to get them back."
On the trio of Joseph, Larentowicz and Phelan
"Phelan did a great job before we took him off. Certainly that trio is pretty formidable. It was nice to see them together again. That only happened because we managed to get another striker on the field, which we hadn’t been able to do for five weeks."
On winning by such a large score-line
"1-0 win would have been huge, but 4-0 is fantastic. 1-0 would have been great. It’s great just to get the three points to get us rolling. Hopefully we start rolling."
On the tempo of the midfield
"It was certainly better. I certainly think we were far from the way we can play. It was down to getting a wee bit more legs back after a few days off. We are off for another few days and back on Tuesday, so hopefully we will be even better next week. It was better but we still have a long way to go to where I think we can be."
On having nine days off between now and Colorado
"I think we have kind of slipped into habits because we’re a bit weary. You tend to slip into some bad habits, and we’ve slipped into a couple of bad habits that we need to iron out and we will do that between now and Saturday."
NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION MIDFIELDER STEVE RALSTON
On combining with Taylor Twellman for the first goal
"I just made a diagonal run on the right and Taylor played a great ball, and the centering pass I think might have taken a little deflection but it ended up right in front of him, and Taylor just gets in front of the goal all the time and it was a great finish."
On winning 4-0
"It’s been a while for us I think being on this side of it and it’s a much better feeling. It’s nice just to be able to get three points. It’s been a while since we’ve won a game so you know we feel like we are finally getting our legs back and we can kind of move forward and get something going here."
On the nine-day break before the next game
"That’s the thing, with our schedule we haven’t had time to work on a lot of things. We haven’t had a real training session in two months so we haven’t had a whole lot of time to work on things we need to work on, you know we worked a couple of days here and getting to relax and come back to work on Tuesday and have real training and go over some things will be good."
CHIVAS USA HEAD COACH PREKI
On the result
"We could have been better than what we showed in the second half, especially after we gave up the first goal. Then I felt too many guys put their heads down, lost a little confidence, and we lost our way. Before that we should even go up, coming into the second half because we had a couple of good looks at the goal and we didn’t score. If Jimmy Curtin touches the ball on the free kick, it’s a goal. Matt Reis doesn’t know anything about the ball, and the ball hits him in the leg. Sometimes you get a lucky break or an unlucky break. The first mistake we made in the second half was very poor play in our side because we did have numbers back, we just didn’t deal with the situation in the right way as a unit, and after that it was an uphill battle. We tried to make plays and opened ourselves up in the back. To me, losing 1-0 and losing 4-0 is the same."
On moving forward
"I thought we came out in the second half and were playing decent in the second half. The way we gave up that goal is really, really disappointing. We will try to get it together for next week. We have six games left."
CHIVAS USA DEFENDER CAREY TALLEY
On the last ten minutes
"We started committing numbers forward and at that point they were just counter attacking and they ended up beating us down the field two times there, the last two times, pushing numbers forward. Guys have to have the responsibility also of coming back and it didn’t happen fast enough. We got caught in transition. What can you do?"
On next week’s match
"Going against Salt Lake, we know they’re playing well right now. We’ve been watching them quite a bit lately. Right now they’re ahead of us and we know that’s a big game coming up when we go there, so I think we know how to prepare for this game. We’ve got another game on turf where it’s difficult to play but the last two games have been on turf, we got a result on it the first time, but the second time it didn’t go our way. We’ve got to make sure the third one does."
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