Pregame notes: San Jose Earthquakes at New England Revolution

Greetings, and welcome to Six States, One Blog’s coverage of tonight’s match at Gillette Stadium between the New England Revolution (2-5-1) and the San Jose Earthquakes (4-2-0).  The two teams met up previously on the west coast on April 17 of this season, which marked a 2-0 loss to the Revs.  It was the first in the Revs’ current string of 6 winless matches, which includes 5 league matches.

Some pregame thoughts:

• The Revolution will be happy to see Marko Perovic, Cory Gibbs, and Kevin Alston back in the lineup.  Perovic played in Wednesday night’s US Open Cup qualifier but was missed in last Saturday’s loss to the Columbus Crew due to suspension.  Alston missed each of the last two.  Gibbs, meanwhile, went against Columbus but sat out Wednesday’s match.  It’s getting fair to say that it’s been a tough go of it this season for the club, but these three have been bright spots and to have them all back in time for further league play can only help New England.  That goes double for Alston and Gibbs, as the Revs finished off Wednesday’s match against New York without a natural defender on the field.
• Who will fill in for Darrius Barnes?  Against New York, it was Chris Tierney, but with Alston, Gibbs, and Perovic good to go in defense and the midfield, and taking into consideration Zak Boggs‘s big night against Columbus, maybe Pat Phelan shifts back to the spot with Perovic and Sainey Nyassi on the wings and Joseph Nioukywithdrawn?  Or might we see something similar to the 4-5-1 that was employed — with success — against Columbus?  Coach Steve Nicol‘s been unable to consistently trot out a lineup this month due to injuries and suspensions, so it’ll be interesting to see what tonight’s crowd looks like.
• Tonight’s match will mark the club’s fifth in the month of May, meaning that New England is officially half way through what will tie for the busiest month in the club’s history.  The schedule will be normalizing over the next couple of weeks for New England, with only one more mid-week match (an exhibition against Portugal’s SL Benfica this coming Wednesday) and two more Saturday night tilts.  Though the company line throughout the wild month has been that the club is taking each game one at a time, to know that this chaos is coming to an end must be at least a subconscious relief — especially given the 0-3-1 record they’ve posted so far in its happening.
• In 2008 and 2009, the Revolution went through stretches similar to this one.  They experienced winless streaks of at least 6 matches in each of the last 2 seasons and still had playoff appearances to show for it.  So, Revs fans, all is not lost…except for the captain, Shalrie Joseph, of course, which probably supplements the lack of wins as reason for pessimism of late.