New England Revolution Head Coach Jay Heaps
On the team’s performance:
“I thought it was a tale of two halves. We came in with the right mentality, and it was a very good [first] half, and the second half we absolutely lost our way. We did not play well. We didn’t play well. We gave them chances and they took advantage of them, and credit to them for taking advantage of them.”
On the defensive slip that led to Fire’s go ahead goal:
“I need to look at the film. But from my vantage point, it never should have been, it should have been headed.”
On the game hinging on a couple key plays:
“When you get into a game like that, and you have a team that is playing in front of their crowd with changes and they’ve been on the road and now they are going to try to create things off our mistakes. The key is not to give them anything. And we did. I didn’t see the third goal, but the two goals we gave them…I don’t want to say we gave it. Because they did great to finish. We never should have been in a position to give them the ball where they [got] it both times. They finished and I want to credit them. I don’t want to say that we handed them anything, they did well finish them. We were assisting their opportunities.”
On not locking down a playoff spot with three losses:
“All three of the games were different in how frustrating they’ve been. Frustrating is…there is really only so much you can do we as a group with last weekend’s game. We really did go about it the right way and missed a chance to win a game and played particularly well. Whatever the situation is, for today we didn’t have a great second half. And that’s frustrating. Points and all that those go with it. It’s more frustrating from a performance standpoint.”
New England Midfielder Chris Tierney
On what the difference was between the two halves:
“I just think not enough of us had good games. We didn’t perform well in the second half. We didn’t pass the ball well. We made key mistakes that cost us a goal so it’s all of us. We are not pointing fingers, we will all look in the mirror and take the loss like men together and look to win at home in two weeks.”
On overcoming mistakes on a road match:
“Yes, it cost us. They have some quick skilled players up top, and we give them a good opportunity to score so it’s all things we need to tighten up if we want to make it to the playoffs and you want to make a run. We have a lot of work to do in these two weeks, and I am sure we will be on the training field working hard.”
On his assist getting down the wing:
“That was one play that worked out for us, but I thought on the whole, it was a tough night and the conditions were tough. No excuses, but we had a lot of chances to put balls in the box, and myself being the primary guilty party there where the service wasn’t good enough. I missed on a few so it’s all stuff that we are looking to improve. We aren’t happy with the way anything went tonight. We got one goal, but we gave up three. There’s a lot of stuff we need to work on.”
On not locking down a playoff spot:
“We are just trying to take it one game at a time. We are not looking big picture. We approach every game to win it. It’s not so much that we have to clinch this week or next week or even clinch at all. We are looking at games as individual games, they each present different challenges and we are just trying to do our best to win each game.”
New England Forward Juan Agudelo
On the team not equalizing their first half performance in the second half:
“[Heaps] is right, it’s a tale of two halves. First half I thought we were worked very hard and second half, I thought we were unlucky at times and other players from their team made great plays to bring us down.”
On rebounding from making mistakes on the road:
“It was a team that had nothing to lose. They just wanted to come out with everything in the second half, and once they got their first goal, they were motivated to pressure a little bit more. With the conditions the field wasn’t great, and the wind was definitely creating a little bit of a havoc, balls were coming in a little bit shorter, and unfortunately we weren’t able to keep the one-zero lead.”
On his chance that was blocked by Busch in the second half:
“It’s a chance that I should have taken. I take full responsibility. The ball was coming in and bobbling a little bit and I just wanted to get it on target. But unfortunately I didn’t get enough power on it and if I would have hit it anywhere else but there…I think Busch was already on the ground. So unfortunately I let my team down in that aspect but I thought we worked hard. I thought we deserved a little bit more than 3-1.”