Saturday against the Revolution, a team we’ve already seen twice this year with that 4-1 win back in April and a 1-1 draw up at Gillette in May. What have you seen since then? How much has the team that will be coming in here this weekend changed?
I think it would be foolish to think that the team that we played 4-1 is going to be that same team. I feel like that was at a point in time where they didn’t know exactly what formation they wanted to play and who they had up top. Since then they’ve added a couple of players and they got a couple players back that are healthy and I think they have a very exciting attack. I think the last couple of games they’ve put together some good stuff offensively, so that’s something we have to be mindful of. But with that being said, I feel like where we’ve been successful in the last five games is we have a game plan and we implement it. If we’re able to take that to them again, I think our chances of being successful are great.
We have a 4-0-1 record over the last five. In terms of when you really want to hit a stride, this is probably when you want to be doing it, right?
Yeah of course. This is what we’ve been talking about the whole time. We’ve had a rough go in the beginning but we just continued to, as a team, have the mentality that we want to build off everything. And even in the middle of the season when we were also playing well, when we went seven games unbeaten, we continued to just preach about building off of each performance. I think we’re in a good place right now, but if you ask the guys, I know they still think we can be better. And so, there’s three games left, and we need to take them one game at a time. With this New England game it’s about playing at home, making sure that we play the way we want to, and keeping our shape defensively. And if those are the things we can do, there’s no reason why we can’t continue to play well.
You mention how critical everyone is of themselves and of the team – how they want to be better and push themselves every day. Would you say that has been the team’s mantra all season long?
It has to be. I think for any successful team you have to think that you can still improve and I think that even right now there’s things that we went over in practice that we know we can be better at. With that being said, that’s also a scary thought. If we can get to where we want to be, I feel like it’d be tough to compete against us. So we’re in a good spot right now, but we’re not going to be complacent. We want to continue to move forward.
All season long the talk has always been focused on the next game; not games weeks or months from now. Has there been any talk about these last three and a chance to close out the season on a high note against three Eastern Conference opponents?
I think everyone is aware of the task at hand. What’s really important for us is to take each individual game for what it’s worth. Of course, collectively, it can add up to something such as making the playoffs and Supporters’ Shield and whatnot. But regardless of if it was eight games, 10 games, or the three games we have left, it’s really important just to go into each game knowing not only that we want to play well to get a result, but we want to continue to improve like we said earlier. We want to continue to improve on our performances. And we know that if we do that, there’s no reason why we can’t get a result in these last three games.
