New England Revolution head coach Steve Nicol

Déjà vu: we make chances, don’t take them, and we give up bad goals. Seen it too many times before.

To be honest, the guys that have played (in the back) have a lot of games behind them. Can’t disguise the fact we’ve made too many mistakes too often defensively and it costs us games. And again tonight, we’ve made chances. Ok, we haven’t taken them, but we’ve made a few chances. How we don’t score at the end, as well, just kind of sums it up. But we give them, I don’t know, three chances and they put two in the net. We keep doing that and you’re going to lose games. 

It’s not a case of motivation, to be honest. It’s people making mistakes. I don’t think again tonight it’s a matter of motivation. We went forward for most of the evening. We just haven’t been able to deal with counter attacks or simple long balls from the goalkeeper’s hand. That’s what’s done us tonight: a 70-yard kick out from the goalie and a counterattack which we haven’t dealt with, and we lose again. You spend the night going forward and try to push them. We didn’t miss any open goals. We certainly had four of five occasions in which we might have scored and we could be sitting here with four or five goals behind us, but we haven’t. And we’ve lost the game because we make basic errors defensively. What else so you say? It’s kind of been the same story for most of the season: we’ve done the same things. We’ve made chances and not taken them and then given up bad goals and we end up losing games.

New England Revolution Keeper Bobby Shuttleworth
We didn’t play poorly in the first half. We had a lot of good chances throughout the game and unfortunately we couldn’t get on the end of some of them. The first half we give away one chance and they score a goal, so obviously we are all extremely frustrated right now.

We didn’t make a ton of mistakes in the back today. Their first goal was obviously just a direct ball, and we have to do better there, obviously. I mean it’s a good touch and a good finish by (Chris Wondolowski) but that should never happen. We should never give up a long ball like that to their player and then scoring on the next touch so, I mean it’s extremely frustrating.

Every game that I play in is important for me. Obviously, I want to be number one in this league and every game for me is another game of experience in different situations. So it’s good to get another game under my belt.

Throughout the season, you can see that the effort is there. Everyone is really busting their tails and guys are giving one hundred percent effort all the time and the passion is there. It’s just mental lapses at important times that have really killed us this year. That’s what we have to focus on these last two games: not giving away one or two mental errors that cost us goals that we end up losing the game on.

I think the injuries play a part, but obviously we have a lot of talented guys in the back. Guys need to be able to step in, like myself. I need to be able to step in and hopefully not miss a beat when it comes to missing Matty (Reis). When people step in, we have to keep it standard and keep it level and consistent.

New England Revolution midfielder Ryan Guy
It’s nice to be playing. It was tough to get in and fortunately I worked my way in, but on the whole it’s frustrating to come in. I want to make a difference and unfortunately things seem to be continuing down the road they’ve been going. But a couple games left and (we have) still some time to show what were made of and what we’ve got.

We’re both pretty comfortable using either foot - playing on either side - so it was basically just if either of us feel uncomfortable or frustrated at any time, we just switch over. Or if it’s easier and there is a corner and we find ourselves over there, we just switch back and forth, no problem.

I thought we controlled the game quite well for the majority of the minutes. But, like I said, it’s the story of our season, unfortunately: a few mistakes and not enough goals in the back of the net.

San Jose Earthquakes head coach Frank Yallop
I think performance-wise we’ve played pretty well for the last three or four months, to be honest, just without getting those points. It’s nice to finally have something to show for a decent away performance.

New England, I thought, created some good chances, too, but it was our night tonight and I thought we didn’t give up, and we kept trying, which was very important.

(Chris Wondolowski)’s a poacher for sure. He always seems to be at the right spot at the right time and he’s actually missed a few chances this yea. But I think he’s top goal scorer again, right now as we speak. It looks like he’s probably got a couple more before the end of the season, hopefully.

We wanted to give (David Bingham) a game because Jon Busch has been fantastic for us, obviously. I just wanted to give the youngster a game, and I thought he did well tonight. Just everything was good. You set the team up to perform well and win, and it was nice, I think, to get both of those tonight.

They certainly have (been decent). Yeah they have. I think it’s hard for the guys to keep lifting their spirits because we’ve played really well and we end up losing or tying. We’ve tied a lot of games this year. We’ve only lost 11, and I know that doesn’t sound like that many. That’s the same as Real Salt Lake, but they’ve won more games than us. I think for us it’s just a good feeling that we finally got three points and it was deserved.

We go up. We get scored on - which has happened a lot to us - and then we come back and get the winner. I was very happy with that type of spirit tonight from our guys. But again, they’ve shown that all year. Not giving up, (they’ve) kept going. We’ve been a little bit unlucky in some games, but tonight it obviously fell to the right guy at the right time, and he scored.

As you go along in the season, you’re figuring out what it’s going to be like next year. Obviously, once you’re out of the playoffs, you start to look at next season and how we can improve the team and how we can just make the squad look more streamlined and add some players to it. That’s what we’ll be doing in the next little while, over the next few weeks, just to kind of figure out what (the team) is going to look like next year and have some holes filled. Hopefully, we can come back with a nice strong season next season.

Well, there’s only one thing worse than (playing well and losing), and that’s playing terrible and not getting the results. We’re at least getting one thing right, but I think (playing well) is important. I would be a little worried if we weren’t playing very well and losing. We would have a mountain to climb, but I think, honestly, we’ve played very well. We showed tonight a little bit in spells how we can play: knock the ball around well and be dangerous.

It wasn't as dominant tonight as it has been in other games, but I thought the football we played was quite nice at times in a tough place to come. (New England) is a tough place to come: they’re good.

Great movement, good ball, great finish. All of the things we ask them to do. It’s easier on paper, but actually doing them in a physical game is the part that the players are doing. It’s great to see what you try to keep preaching and talking about, they’re trying to do things that we are asking them to do. It’s just nice that they get rewarded finally with a great performance, a great win.

(Ramiro Corrales) is okay. I think he just rolled him ankle a little bit, but we’ll see how he is in the morning.

We we’re talking before the game that we want to finish the season well. No matter what position we’re in or what we’re doing, we definitely want to end up with three wins if we can. I didn’t put a bunch of new players out (on the field) and try them out and not care about the result. I care about the result, and I think it showed that we put out a team to win the game and we ended up doing that. Those guys deserve to play. I made one chance from the team that drew last week - just with the goalkeeper - but Jon (Busch) will play next game for sure because he deserves to play. I’ve been very happy with the output of the players and the way they’ve handled things.

San Jose Earthquakes goalkeeper David Bingham
We just needed to settle in. It took us a little bit to settle in today. It was a little scrappier than we’re used to playing.

It was definitely good. I just wanted to show the coaches. They took a big risk in putting me on tonight – first game really, so, sitting behind a veteran like (Jon) Busch, so they definitely took a leap out there. I just wanted to show them that I appreciate it and that I can play if they want me to.

They didn’t know I could put it over the top. Wondo (Chris Wondolowski) was in and he took a phenomenal touch and just did the rest.

They were mainly just trying to play it quick over the top or get it wide, but our defenders did a great job; they didn’t really have any looks at all in the second half on goal besides the goal, so credit to them. They played great tonight and made my job easy.

Every number two wants to play. They all want to play. No one wants to sit, so when you get the chance, you have to definitely take advantage of it and do the most with it and ensure your coaches that they’re putting their job on the line by putting you in. So you’re playing for them and the team and we did well tonight.”

San Jose Earthquakes forward Chris Wondolowski
It’s just huge and just a relief to get the three points. Even tonight I thought we played pretty well, but even some other times I thought we played even better than that but not get the results. So it’s just nice to grind it out and I thought it was a full team performance tonight.

Simon (Dawkins) connected a great pass to Sam (Cronin) and Sam just put it on a platter for me, so that’s a great goal. Didn’t have a lot of room, but I wasn’t that far out so just the main part was getting on top of it and making sure I put it over.

Hopefully I can pull it out. I know Dwayne (De Rosario) still has a bunch of games left, Thierry (Henry) also has, I think I’m going to have to do some work in the next two games, but it’s just nice to get a win.

I know that (David) Bingham has a great distribution and he launched the ball and I was kind of ready for it and just kind of timed the run and put it right there, so that was nice. Getting the ball there is half the work, so I decided to bring it down and finish it.

I know there’s a long offseason, but to be honest with you, I really feel that if we play well and get some wins, it will carry some momentum into next year. It’s just always nice to win no matter whether it’s for playoffs or for pride, and we have a lot of pride in here and we just want to play together and play well as a team.

It’s been pretty frustrating at times just because … it’s not like we haven’t been putting in the work. If times we weren’t putting in the work and we were being lazy and stuff, then I can understand that. But we couldn’t quite put our finger on it - we just got punished every time, we did slip up a little bit and we didn’t capitalize on other teams’ mistakes as well as we should have. So that’s always probably the most frustrating part, but that kind of gets swept away right now and it’s just nice for this win.

I lost the ball in the corner and it was on me to try and win it back. (Kevin) Alston is a really fast guy and I tried to get to him, he cut it well and I took him down. It was just one of those things, I tried to get the ball, took him down. Unlucky.