New England Revolution head coach Jay Heaps:
Opening statement:

“It was an Eastern Conference match. I thought it was hard-fought both ways. But credit New York, I thought we came out and started that game on the right foot and really did a nice job for the first 15 or 20 minutes. Then towards the end of the first half, they took control of it and did a nice job. I thought we re-approached the game in the second half the right way and had a couple of chances to put it away, but you credit that New York team because they never gave up and they fought all the way to the end.”

On his club’s game plan:

“I wasn’t expecting as many changes as they made, but our game plan was to stay the same. The first 20 minutes we wanted to pin them and try to get them back there and test their backline and I thought we did that. I thought Charlie (Davies) goal was great. I thought there was another turnover that we could get something. We had a couple chances where we had turnovers in really dangerous areas but just couldn’t capitalize. Going into the second half, we felt that the game would open up a little bit. We wanted to be mindful of that but also we made a little tactical change. We felt that Scotty (Caldwell) and (Andy) Dorman were sitting on top of our back four a little too much and we were playing Charlie (Davies) and maybe Teal (Bunbury) high and the rest of the seven guys defending and that wasn’t helping at all. So we switched that and I thought the second half was a little bit better.”

On defender London Woodberry’s performance:

“We’re really happy with London. That was his third game in a row and I think he’s got really good feet and he’s kind of like Andrew Farrell, he’s a natural center back. We saw him play in college quite a bit. His feet are really good and I love that he’s hitting early ball. Early in the game he hit the cross there and then there were a couple of others after that so we really like the way he’s putting the ball in the box. It’s almost giving us a match to Chris (Tierney) on the other side so that teams have to defend both sides.”

On the importance of scoring the second goal before New York made their substitutions:

“You knew they were going to bring in Bradley Wright-Phillips and Lloyd Sam and really wreak havoc on the game and they did. I think that it was important for us to get that goal. We wanted one more, I would have felt a little bit better but in the end, credit their guys and credit our team. I thought we did a great job of rolling up our sleeves. After we gave up one we could have easily given up another one, but our guys dug in deep and didn’t give much after that.”

On forward Charlie Davies’ recent run of form:

“Not only does he have the ability to stretch the game and create some space for players underneath and also our wingers, but he’s an emotional leader in there. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how he keeps the group together and how he handles the game. I think Charlie had not a great training on Thursday and we always say, alright, he’s going to score on Saturday. We always hope that he has that one bad training session a week so that he scores on Saturday.”

On the build up to the second goal:

“I thought it was a lot of good play. I thought we pushed hard, we did a lot of nice little things and we made those angle passes. Teal (Bunbury) did a great job of staying wide. When Scotty (Caldwell) and Lee (Nguyen) were able to combine, Teal was in the perfect spot so the ball went right to him. That’s what we talked about. Their defenders are going to close on the ball, they have to because they have to take away the shot, so we always talk about our spacing. That’s a perfect example of not getting too on top of each other, having that pass. I thought Teal was exactly where he needed to be.”

On midfielder Lee Nguyen starting the game on the bench:

“Earlier in the week, Lee had some private matters and missed a little bit of training time. We felt going into this week it was much better to approach it with Kelyn (Rowe) and then bring Lee off the bench.”

On bringing in defender Jose Goncalves late in the game:

“It was an idea we thought about. Once Andy Dorman got a yellow card it was going to help. (New York) got bigger. They brought in Bradley Wright-Phillips so we also wanted to bring another defender in that could defend. I thought Jose came in and did a great job. He came in and energized the group. Jose’s been really good in training and we don’t want to make too many changes in our back line, but we wanted to incorporate him back in. I thought it was the right time and also, it helped solidify our midfield because Jermaine (Jones) was able to connect and push the game a little higher.”

New England Revolution defender London Woodberry
On his first-ever assist in MLS:

“I mean that’s my goal going in each game you know, I want to get on the score sheet either whether it’s a goal or an assist. Today luckily Charlie (Davies) got on the end of one and helped us get the win.”

On how he contributes to the attack:

“Yeah definitely, it just brings another dynamic to our attacking style team you know. We’ve got a bunch of guys with a lot of different weapons and I think me coming in on the right is just another addition to what we have.”

On playing his first game against the Red Bulls as a member of the Revolution:

“Yeah definitely, I mean those guys, they’re a good team and they came to play you know. Obviously they had a tough week, they made some changes, but those guys stepped in obviously wanted to make an impression to their coach and try to get a result here, but I mean you’ve got to give credit to our guys for getting two goals and being able to keep them off the score sheet more than once I guess. Ultimately my job and a defenders job is to defend first, so that’s on the mind, you know trying to just make sure we grind out that last fifteen minutes, make sure we get three points.”

On the build up to the goal:

“Yeah I mean I’m not sure actually what happened, but I know I was in the corner just trying to do what I do best, is working hard. Luckily I got a ball to my feet and served it in to Charlie (Davies) in there and then he buried it.”

On his performance tonight:

“You know home games, and obviously they had three games this past week so we wanted to bring it to them early and you know it was tough because they’re a good team, but I feel like that was our main goal going into the first part of the game.”

On his recent run of form:

“It feels good you know, obviously I don’t think tonight was my best night, but I’m just trying to build from here, keep going, learning from what I did and just keep the momentum going and try to keep our team on the right track.”

On playing on the right side:

“At right back you get a little more freedom to go forward and stuff like that, and that’s always a fun part of soccer. You know, defending is not the most fun all the time, but being able to defend and go forward in the same position it’s a luxury, you know, I enjoy it.”

On being comfortable pushing forward from his position at right back:

“Obviously I don’t think tonight was our strongest night, but I think going forward we’ve got a good team and we know what we possess with our quality, so it’s coming to together.”

New England Revolution midfielder Jermaine Jones
On the rivalry with New York and the altercation after the final whistle:

“You know, for me, I can talk from the first time when I played there, in New York already when me and (Dax) McCarty got this whole thing with the tackling. So I know that there’s a little bit feelings. You can see it the same in baseball with Red Sox and Yankees, so maybe we have that with New York Red Bulls. In one point, I say it’s nice. You want that game. And I like that game. After the game, of course, both of us maybe, can handle that different, but it happened. Still, I don’t want to go against something. I let it go. Wish him the best for the next game and I’m happy that we win.”

On what the team is looking forward to going in to next week:

“We have to be focused. We played the first 50 minutes really good let New York come back a little bit and for that we have to watch out. For the next game we need more control of the game, and sometimes take the speed out of the game and keep the ball.”

On the club’s attitude moving forward:

“I think now it’s important that we enjoy it, that we are in first place but we still have to work and we have to see game for game. It was tough to come to that position and it will be tough to stay in that position.”

On forward Charlie Davies’ recent run of form:

“I’m happy for him but obviously I’m not happy for him because he could have scored more today. I always say I remember a couple of games back he was a little bit down when he didn’t start and I told him, “keep going, you played a good season last season and you’re really important to the team. You get the chance you will score and you will come back and that’s what he did.”

On the team chemistry:

“I think the biggest point. I always try to get them to play with fun. When we train you can see that we have so much fun in training and we can keep the ball really good and if we get that back in the games. I’m 100 percent sure that a lot of teams will have a really tough game against us. We have to do that every game. Today, we did it the first 15 or 20 minutes but then we gave back New York one or two chances.” 

On starting in the central defense:

“I have no problem playing there but of course I like to play midfield. I do it for the team. Jose (Goncalves) was a long time injured and now he comes back step by step. We will see, I have no problem. The important thing is that we win. It’s always nice to be involved maybe to score a goal. It’s difficult when you play in the back and you see a counter is there. When you get over the middle line and you’re like, stop. I like to play midfield but like I’ve said before I do it for the team. I want to try everything so we stay up there.”

New York Red Bulls head coach Jesse Marsch
On the club’s response to lineup changes in the midweek game against Colorado:

“Listen, I think we put this game on our terms. The only frustrating part was that at the start of both halves, we let it slip away and then dug ourselves a hole in each half. But, the guys, I think, still managed to set the tone for the match overall. We played this game, it played out the way we were hoping it would and thought it would, other than the fact that we just made a couple mistakes and it meant that we had to chase the game.”

On the performance of his squad players:

“I think so. I think a lot of the guys that stepped in knew their roles, came out there competed. It was a fast game, it was a hard game, it was a competitive game, one with a lot of energy. And I think that all our guys stepped in and did a good job. So, we know we have a deep squad. We’ve got some young players but we believe in them. This will be part of the maturation process for our entire organization.”

On almost earning a point:

“We pushed hard. We emptied our tanks. That was the standard that we wanted to set coming in here. We knew we had tired legs, we knew our backs were against the wall. But, in that way I think we responded in a great way and were a little bit unlucky to come out with a point.”

On playing in New England:

“Yeah it is. You have to know what kind of game you’re getting into and it took us – They were able to deflect a couple clearances early and you realize that there’s not a lot of space, there’s not a lot of time. The turf gives you weird bounces and it’s a field where you have to choose your moments on when you want to try to pass and you have to play direct a lot. So, it makes it competitive every time, and they’re a good team too.”

On not starting forward Bradley Wright-Phillips:

Yeah, I think we just wanted fresh legs and we demand a lot physically with the way we play. And so we thought that if we could have the game hang on and put him (Wright-Phillips) and Lloyd (Sam) in the 55-60th minute that that would be a good way for us to come here and be successful. We just made a couple, too many mistakes.

New York Red Bulls goalkeeper Luis Robles
On the result:

“I’m really proud of the guys. The effort in the second half was phenomenal. I think it speaks a lot about the character of this team, the locker room we have, the individuals we have. Our mistakes cost us but in the end of the day we are proud of the way the boys battled back and really up until that final whistle, made that a game.”

On the lineup changes before the game:

“We had some new guys in there today, so it’s going to be a little different, a little different feel but I felt like they did well. They were put in a difficult situation, New England is always difficult to play in, but I like I said the effort of the guys even though we went down and really couple of mistakes did us in, but the way the fought all the way to the final whistle, is something we can take away from this game and built upon and look forward to the next one.”

On the depth of his club:

“Today was a good test we knew we had quality on the bench and I felt once the guys got their feet under them they were able to show that quality, so it only continues to grow our confidence in them, grow our confidence in the squad and I think looking forward, we have a lot of confidence knowing that no matter who is in there we are going to able to battle teams and play with quality but also grind out results.”     

New York Red Bulls forward Mike Grella
On the club’s performance after changes to the lineup in the midweek game:

“I’ve always known that we have a good squad and great management that trusts in the squad and I think that’s what makes us a team.  We trust each other and we really fought hard for each tonight. We just didn’t get the result we wanted. A lot of things we need to fix but we’ll be better for it.” 

On positive takeaways from the game:

“I think the first goal sparked us a bit and then we started to put a bit of pressure on them, but there’s definitely things we want to work on and things we want to do better, and take our chances better, and also defend a little bit better, but for the most part that game we did a lot of what we want to do and we controlled most of the match. I think they just finished their chances.”

On almost coming back from down two goals:

“Absolutely I mean this group of guys is tremendous to be around and tremendous to play with tremendous to play with. I’m just surprised when we got that first goal that we didn’t, because we had fifteen, twenty minutes to get back into the game and tie the game and I really thought we would and I think everyone did and we had a couple half chances but it just didn’t go our way.” 

On the club’s confidence so far this season:

“I think you can see the way we fight to the end and now the undefeated truth is over but maybe we’ll be better for it. We’ll learn from our mistakes and more importantly than that I think we’ll still be stronger for it as a group because I think we still have that belief that we can beat them. I think if you look at that game we had a lot of chances, we had a lot of opportunity, we had a lot of the ball. So I think we just move on from here and keep going, it’s a long season.”