The New England Revolution absolutely outplayed Orlando City SC on Saturday night on their way to a 3-0 victory.

Orlando managed to create eight shots in the match, but without the likes of Kaká, Cyle Larin and Darwin Cerén, who are away for the international break, their punch is light and harmless. As a result, all four of the Lions shots that were on target were saved by the Revolution’s goalie Bobby Shuttleworth.

The Revolution, on the other hand, were firing on all cylinders. Like an accurate artillery barrage, New England’s offense kept Orlando stuck in no man’s land, constantly second guessing their decisions. With Lee Nguyen pulling the strings for the Revs, Orlando never caught their breath.

“Well I thought we prepared really well this week,” New England’s manager Jay Heaps said after the match. “We were under the impression both teams were missing a player that was key, but I felt that they had a couple of good players, so we weren’t exactly sure what they were going to do in terms of the personnel, but we felt that if we could get them pinned we could really make it hard for them to get out and I thought that’s what we did really well. We put them under pressure, every time the ball turned over we tried to win the ball back immediately to keep them under as much pressure as we could.”

However, the Revs did not break through till the first half was about to end. Orlando goalkeeper Tally Hall had frustrated the Revolution offense up to that point by constantly stopping everything they threw at him.  

The Nguyen show finally took off with only two minutes left in the first 45. He quickly chipped the ball into the penalty box, where Diego Fagundez controlled the pass and then blasted the ball to make it 1-0 at the 43rd minute.

The New England offense kept pushing but the Lions managed to crawl into the half with just a one goal deficit. However, the Revolution did not slow down and Hall kept up his Superman performance. The veteran keeper finished the game with six goals, but eventually the Revs finished the Lions off.

In the final minutes of the game the Revs scored their final two goals. Once again Nguyen was responsible for picking apart the Orlando defense.

The crafty midfielder saw a wide open Teal Bunbury in the box. Wasting no time he quickly passed the ball to Bunbury.

Then the Canadian native gently sent a cross to a cutting Juan Agudelo. The U.S. international forward simply tapped the ball into the net to make it 2-0 at the 84th minute.

Ten minutes later Nguyen displayed some trickery and technique with the ball to set up the third goal.

He was in the heart of the box with the ball and left back Chris Tierney was to his left. The Maestro had a defender in front of him. Then within a blink of an eye Nguyen back heeled the ball to Tierney, and then the left back took care of the rest and finished the game 3-0.

“Well I think Lee [Nguyen] was moving well,” Heaps said about Nguyen’s performance. “He had a guy on him the first thirty, forty minutes he had a guy everywhere he went and so I thought he moved well and didn’t get frustrated because that’s what’s going to happen in games like this, they’re going to follow him. I think we’re a good enough team, or balanced enough team where he doesn’t have to score the goal and now if he gets a little bit of space the runners can run off of him, and that’s what happened tonight with three assists.”

New England is in fourth place in the Eastern Conference right now with 40 points. If they can defeat Toronto FC at BMO Field next Sunday they can possibly jump into second.

The Lions, on the other hand, are now in eighth place and are very much on the outside looking in at the playoff picture. However, for their next match they will be back at the Citrus Bowl and in need of a victory to keep their postseason dreams alive. Their next opponent will be Sporting Kansas City on Sunday.