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SKC aims to keep rolling against New England

Sep 25, 2014 - 9:24 PM Kansas City, KS (SportsNetwork.com) - Sporting Kansas City will attempt to maintain its encouraging run of form on Friday when the club welcomes the New England Revolution to Sporting Park.

Things looked dire for the reigning MLS Cup champions after they endured a run of four successive defeats in league play, but the club has cruised to three straight wins across all competitions, all of which came by rather comfortable margins.

Following a disappointing 2-1 loss to Red Bull New York on Sept. 6, Sporting turned its fortunes around, beginning with a 4-0 demolition of Chivas USA on Sept. 12, its most recent MLS regular season outing.

The club carried that momentum into CONCACAF Champions League play where it claimed a 3-1 home defeat of Saprissa and 3-0 victory over Real Esteli.

"To be honest, our improvement started back in the New York game (on Sept. 6)," midfielder Graham Zusi said of SKC's recent form. "Although that result didn't turn out in our favor, I think we got back to who we are. Against Chivas, it kind of all came together. And it's going back to the basics - we're a team that prides ourselves on outworking the other team and putting them under an enormous amount of pressure. In the past three games, we've gotten back to that."

Now, Sporting will turn its attention to a New England side that has gotten the better of Kansas City this season. The Revs won both of the previous meetings between the two sides this term, cruising to a 2-0 win on April 26 and a 3-1 victory on Sept. 3.

"The first matchup against them (in April) we played well but were a bit unlucky. The second game was part of that skid that we were in, and that just wasn't us," Zusi said of SKC's encounters with New England this season. "They're a team who goes on streaks of their own, and right now they're on a good one. I expect them to come in and try to play with us as much as possible. We're coming down to the final stretch of our season and each game has postseason implications. So we need to get a good result."

New England's current vein of form has been impressive, though the club did taste defeat last time out. The Revs entered last weekend on a five-game winning run only to be undone by Federico Higuain in a 1-0 loss to the Columbus Crew.

"It's obviously disappointing, we wanted to come here and get a result," said Revs striker Charlie Davies. "Columbus played like they wanted it more, they had more energy than us. We didn't have the best of first halves, but we were able to keep it even and go into half even. I thought that we played better in the second half, we just gave them good chances. If you give Higuain some free kicks, he is going to put it in."

The result leaves New England three points back of Kansas City in the Eastern Conference table, meaning that a win at Sporting Park would see the two sides go level for second place with 45 points apiece.