Manatee Season

It didn't take long for clueless Red Bull to sack Bruce Arena. Good new for the Revs as their rivals from New York will begin fresh yet again next year, stifling any chance of building a solid foundation. Sure, Bruce did a lot more sweating from his folds than coaching, but his replacement will be their fourth manager since Bob Bradley was erroneously sacked by Alexi Lalas just over two years ago.

Frankie Yallop has left LA Galaxy for re-expansion side San Jose Earthquakes, so there's speculation Arena would go there. That would be funny if it happened, but only expect that if LA can't nail down a high profile coach. I wouldn't hold you breath.

As a Revs fan, I can't help but feel responsible as my team most likely cost chubby his job. Responsibility is a good characteristic.

In other news, Micheal Parkhurst won MLS Defender of the Year. I didn't see that coming. Congratulations to Mike! I just hope this doesn't put too much of a spotlight on him from foreign clubs at a time he needs to concentrate on finishing out the playoffs. Coach Steve Nicol said it would take a lot of money for a team to swoop in and take Parkhurst away. We may see just how much money that is during the off season. My guess: over $3 million. Former MLS players are proving themselves all the time overseas. Parky's also extremely valuable to the Revs. I'm not sure a team would pay that much for him, but New England considers him way too valuable to let go without a major financial benefit. We'll just have to wait and see.

Verdict's In: We're All A Bunch Of Homers

The poll results are closed, and the overwhelming winner for the most resent poll question of "How will the Revs finish the season?" was "MLS Cup Champions".

I guess if you look at it from a realistic perspective, the poll's actually a lot closer to 50/50 in regards to positive/negative. A lot of you probably figured the Eastern Conference final would have been held in DC, so that was the easier choice of exit at the time. Still, the poll was more positive than I expected. Good on ya Revs fan!

Personally, I had them out in the first round. My rational was sound. The Revs are as good as anyone they play. They just aren't significantly better than anyone. With the current status of professional sports in New England, something had to give at some point. Well it hasn't occured yet. Just look at what happened with the Pats and the Celts on Sunday. The B's are irrelevant and in case you are outside of New England, at least a third of the region hates BC for one reason or another. About another third may favor them in football, but hate them in hoops and hockey. In other words, the sports gods who supposed to even things up, and are apparently asleep at the switch, don't count BC sports in their karmic calculations.

So, the clock's going to strike midnight on our sports teams at some point. I just thought it was going to happen on Saturday night during Hurricane Noel.

Getting back to DC, the new poll question asks which team has been the biggest chokers since the end of 2004: DC or the Revs? Now, there's a few things to consider (yeah, I realize this post will be buried in a few days):

This will be mostly from an American sports view of choking. Such choking involves either losing in an important playoff or championship when you are favored or blowing a lead in such an important game. I realize there may be a paradigm shift going on in regards to the Supporters Shield, but get real. The vast majority of people consider MLS Cup the only true championship.

To me, it's a tossup at this point in time and that's why it's the poll question. DC has gone in to every playoff they've lost in that time as the favorite. The last two years, they had the league's best record. The Revs have lost the last two MLS Cups, once as a favorite and once blowing an overtime lead in 71 seconds. Then again, the Revs did bounce DC on their home field last year. They also lifted a minor cup tournament trophy this year, though that's probably irrelevant to this discussion.

This poll will close in a week, so if you want to wait for Thursday's game, I can understand. I'm curious to see any comments on this topic

1-0 Is Still 1-0!

Just got back from Gillette. The Revs earned their place in the Eastern Conference final on Thursday. The goal was freaky, but I'll take it. Red Bull didn't look dangerous at all. I guess the Revs won the series by finishing one of their two or three chances they had. New York didn't and that was the difference. I would love to see the play that knocked out Angel. I sure hope Joseph isn't suspended as a result. I missed what happened, but since he wasn't carded, he's vulnerable to a punishment after the fact. Go MLS!

I'm exhausted, yet wired at the same time. There will be a more informative recap within the next day or so.

See everyone on Thursday!

Off To Gillette To Get Wet

Well, this should be fun.

For the third straight year, the Revs home leg for the first round of the playoffs will be hindered by extreme weather. Granted, the torrential rains stopped just in time for the game last year, but we don't appear to be as lucky this time around. The storm formerly known as Hurricane Noel is beginning to slam into Southern New England and it doesn't look pretty. The most severe weather is scheduled for a few hours before kickoff, an ominous sign for those peddling popcorn and super pretzels at the game tonight.

So the crowd will be about half the expected 16,000. Big deal. Those of us who will brave the elements will have the chance to witness firsthand another chapter in Revolution history, before the sport "takes off" and prices out the working man. Though this has been a disappointing trend for the front office (also, the 2004 home leg was during game one of the World Series), the onfield heroics have been legendary for the team. In 2004, they surprised Supporter's Sheild winner Columbus Crew 1-0. In 2006, they bested bitter rivals Chicago Fire in a shootout after going behind 2-0 on aggregate.

However, the most famous has to be the 2005 game against today's opponent's former incarnation, the Metrostars. Fans had to drive through blizzard-like conditions to even get to Foxboro. The Revs went into the game down 1-0, and Youri Djerkoff scored a second half goal against the run of play. Words can't describe what happened next, so I'll just let you watch the video:



Good stuff, huh. A repeat by Khano would negate his 2007 performance in my eyes.

So, keys to the game:

* Get lucky with the weather
* End of keys to the game

Seriously, the wind is going to create havoc. Both teams are fairly evenly matched and it'll be nature deciding this one.

Get out to Gillette. The season is on the line and the winner gets to host the Eastern Conference Final on Thursday (thanks for the choke, DC). History will be made tonight. Will you be watching at the stadium or searching for matches to light candles when the power goes out? I hope the answer is obvious.

Soccer Bloggers: Get With Blogrush

Blogrush is a free traffic generating network. It works by installing a small widget in your blog's sidebar which displays four other blogs in the network. I subscribed to it a little over a week ago when I read an article on Widgets Lab which stated how it cleansed over 10,000 blogs which didn't comply with it's terms of service. That earned my temporary trust, so I decided to give it a shot.
(click title to read more)
I have been pleasantly surprised with the widget thus far. The biggest thing that impresses me is how quickly it loads. I've tried various widgets since this blog's inception and I've had to scrap most of them because they've killed load times. That's clearly not the case. They also rolled out a fantastic statistics page which shows you how many times one of your specific articles was syndicated and how many times it was clicked. There's other stats such as credits (mostly accumulated through page loads) and bonus credits, but the syndication stats is the most useful.

Up until now, my widget has been in the "sports" category. That's why I keep it so far down the page in my blog. It just doesn't fit my soccer orientated blog. I've used it to find a ton of good blogs from other sports (and a few soccer blogs), but I doubt very highly the visitors we've been getting have even noticed it. Hopefully, this changes today as "soccer" is now one of the categories.

This is where I need you, the soccer blogger to get in on the action. If enough soccer bloggers get in the network, it would expose our articles to a broader audience of real soccer fans around the world. If I notice that the articles being loaded into my widget are 100% soccer, and not overflow from the abundance of MMA blogs out there, I will move the widget to either first or second position in one of my sidebars.

That last part is important. For this to really work, we must place the widget in as good a spot possible. If not, you'll see 1000's of syndications on your stat sheet with no reads. There's also an embarrassing "cold" in your article's hype meter on your personal Blogrush page. You don't want that.

Oh, and this is by no means a replacement for the SoccerBlogs site. The widget's display is fairly random and is only a small sample of what's on that great aggregater site. If you have a soccer blog and aren't on that site, get on it ASAP.

So, please check out Blogrush by clicking on the link below or clicking on the link at the bottom of my widget. Be sure to watch the video showing off the newest features. With enough soccer bloggers getting onboard, we'll all benefit.


http://www.blogrush.com/r74063839