Minnesota scored two in a loss on the road over the weekend, conceding two penalties against the New England Revolution. Head Coach Adrian Heath spoke with reporters following the match about how he felt his team measured up against the home side.

Head Coach Adrian Heath

On the faults of the defense:
“I’ll have to see it again, but obviously the first half was really, really poor defensively, every time they attacked it looked like they were going to score and that’s why we made the change. We had to put an extra body in there just to shore it up a little bit and it seemed to have the desired effect. I thought we were a lot better [in the] second half, but it was a little bit too little, too late and as I’ve just said to the guys, we’ve got to take a serious look at what we’re doing because we can’t keep conceding goals the way we are at this moment in time, it’s too easy for the opposition to score.”

On being short staffed with players:
“It doesn’t help when you’ve got four players who are away, probably would’ve played, but we still should’ve been better than we were. That’s not an excuse, I don’t like making excuses, but we should have been a lot better than we were today. As I said, I thought second half we got ourselves at 4-2, we looked like we got a foothold in the game and then we go and do it again, we give a goal away, straight away. We’ve done it about three times this season. It’s disappointing.”

On a solution, formation or mentality:
“A mentality, formation maybe, personnel, but we assume we have to make some decisions, some really hard decisions and important decisions in the next few months because we can’t carry on like that. We have to either change personnel, shape, or maybe both, but as I said that wasn’t good enough today.”

On what changes he’s asking the players to make:
“I don’t think that we’re asking them anything that they can’t do, that’s the positive thing. We spend most of the week on defensive shape, being in the right spots at the right time. Obviously today in the first half they could’ve conceded, we had a lot more first half. Every time they attacked they looked like they were dangerous and some of that was down to who we’re defending and who we’re positioning rather than really good play from them. They have good players. Against this type of attack, you don’t need to be put at the back which we were.”

On what happened after last week:
“No, I just think that we were poor today and as I said, we’ll have to have a good look at it. It’s hard to talk right after the game and process it all, but obviously some of the stuff that I saw wasn’t good and I know that from the sidelines. I’m sure when we have a look at the tape back a lot of that will be confirmed.”

On the penalty calls:
“I’d have to see them again. The lads were really disappointed. I thought he was outside the penalty and as I said we just got to 4-2 getting some momentum in the game so that’s disappointing, but we’ve done it two or three times, every time we scored a goal. We did it last week in Colorado; we’re 2-1 up, two minutes later we give up a goal, its stuff to work on.”

On the positive to take from the match:
“Obviously getting Abu’s [Danladi] first start, I thought he was terrific, only one of the few players who wanted the ball and made his play and I thought second half there was a little bit more pride shown. I thought Thiesson played really well in the second half as well. We’ll have a look at it, there’s a lot of hard work ahead of us, some really important decisions to be made.”