FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Jay Heaps wanted his New England Revolution side to be better on set pieces Saturday night against Toronto FC. They were.
After conceding a pair of goals from set pieces in last weekend’s 2-2 draw with the Chicago Fire, the Revs flipped the script against TFC, scoring from three dead-ball situations in a comfortable 3-1 win.
“It’s something we really work on,” said Heaps. “We have to, because we have great guys that can serve, we’ve got really good runs in the box and I just liked the way we were aggressive on all our free kicks.”
The pick of the bunch was the opener from Charlie Davies, a perfectly-crafted set piece straight off the training ground. From a potential shooting position, Chris Tierney chipped a free kick into the right side of the box for Kelyn Rowe, who hit a first-time volley across the face of goal for Davies.
Hungry for his first goal since June 21, Davies crashed the net and bundled home from close range.
“On the first goal, I saw that the ball was over the top for Kelyn,” said Davies. “I just had to position myself near post and make sure I got there. Kelyn put it on a dime for me and I just had to get my body in the way and it ricocheted off me. Pure striker’s goal. Garbage goal. We’ll take it.”
Less than 10 minutes later Tierney and Rowe were again involved in a goal-making set piece; Tierney’s whipped service from the left forced Damien Perquis to drag Rowe down in the box, leading to a penalty which Lee Nguyen coolly dispatched for his fifth goal of the season.
Davies then notched his second of the game – and team-leading ninth of the year – early in the second half, latching onto another Tierney set piece and beating TFC goalkeeper Joe Bendik from close range.
“I’m not going to say we practiced the whole week on set pieces,” Andrew Farrell said with a wry smile. “We take pride when we want to execute something, to execute it right.”
New England’s success in that department against TFC helped them climb into a tie for third place in the Eastern Conference, and sent the Revolution into their first bye week of the season on a 2-0-1 run.
“Everyone has that positive attitude in the locker room after a game like this,” said Davies. “We get a bye week and then hopefully next week we come out flying.”
