Football is one of those games where your confidence takes a pummeling if you keep on losing and after a few really bad losses you might even second guess your choice of sport. If there’s one thing I hope didn’t happen last night it would be that TFC didn’t lose their confidence. We got beat on every single one-on-one matchup and as solid as the defense looked against Chivas, it was equally bad today. The only bright spot that I could see was Alecko Eskandarian who was on a personal mission to see that TFC had a respectable shot count. Aside from his occasional burst towards the net there was almost nothing that one could point to and say “Well, that’s encouraging”.

I hate for a rookie blogger to be second guessing a coach but playing three at the back might not be such a great idea given the inexperience of the back line and the potent opposition we face. Having a midfielder drop back to “help out” the defense only works when the defense isn’t being constantly bombarded with runs down the middle. Having a help-out defender also means that your matchups will not always be the same and many times tonight TFC defenders had no idea who they were guarding. Andrew Boyens had a really bad game despite making some chance-saving tackles in the field, he allowed Twellman to get behind him on the second goal and was even nice enough to give him space for a free header. Although the game was decided by that time, his mugging of Cristman which lead to a converted penalty was a sign of fatigue and perhaps laziness on defense.

We lost all individual matchups in midfield (Toronto MLS blog has player ratings) and didn’t do nearly enough to inconvenience the New England midfielders. They were whizzing past Welsh, Nagamura and Canizalez with an ease that has to trouble Mo Johnston. It was fitting that it was a beaten Canizalez that was the cause of the first goal. Canizalez was completely beaten by Khano Smith on a simple fake-left go-right move which led to Twellman’s first goal. It was at that point that I knew it was going to be a long night.

The majority of TFC possession was in the first third of the field, anytime the ball got to midfield, it was quickly turned over and the pressure was back on the defense. This was the a repeating sequence of events throughout the first half when the game was still in question. The midfield passing was extremely poor, so poor that I felt better when the one of the back three skipped the midfield entirely and played directly to the forwards. When we did manage to get the ball on offense, things weren’t that much better. Edson Buddle was shackled down and never managed to turn his defender around all game, forcing to either pass or turn the ball over. Buddle should’ve scored for us late in the game after finding himself wide open from 10 yards out but that happened when it was 4-0. As mentioned before, Alecko was the only man who ever threatened to come close to scoring for us.

The halftime team at The Score were questioning the effort of TFC and claiming that they were outworked. I disagree, I thought our 3-5-2 formation was suicide and never gave us a chance to even get a point out of this game. If Mo Johnston ever thought he could get full points out of this game, he’s a hopeless romantic. We should’ve dug down defensively and played a simple 4-4-2 and given ourselves a chance. But let’s keep things in perspective, New England is a very good team and we are not. The final scoreline was definitely fair and we should be thankful that it wasn’t much worse.

Game Notes: Revolution got their 500th MLS goal…We got the New England feed on The Score, they interviewed some US women’s soccer player named Heather Mitts who I immediately hated after her cocky comment of “Of course, we’re going to win the World Cup”…The Score half-time team is a little odd, Brian Budd sounds like he might have a rat stuck in his throat…Lots of TFC fans had made the trip and were making good noise despite the scoreline.