Revs' John not worried about time
By Kyle McCarthy / MLSnet.com Staff 
Avery John is battling for the Revolution's left back position. (Jim Rogash/WireImage.com) FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - When the New England Revolution took the field on Thursday night at RFK Stadium, the backline was missing a familiar component at left back.
For the first time in six months, someone else was preferred to Avery John at left back for the Revolution.
"It's the first game he's missed in a year," Revolution manager Steve Nicol said. "It's one of those situations where we had a choice and we made a decision."
The choice on that night was James Riley, who had filled in admirably for the injured Michael Parkhurst after the Revolution center back missed the first couple of matches in the current campaign.
But it left the persistently present John standing on the sidelines as an unused substitute.
John's place in the team was established toward the tail end of last season. After a successful World Cup with Trinidad & Tobago, John had to settle for a place on the bench behind Riley before starting seven of the final eight contests during the regular season and all four playoff tilts. John started the first four games of this season before dropping to the bench.
John said that while he wants to be in the team, he knows that it's something over which he has no control.
"The manager's in charge," John said. "He makes the decision. It doesn't make sense to moan and whine about it."
It was the second match in a row in which John spent a significant portion of the contest on the bench. Riley had entered the 1-0 victory against FC Dallas for John at the halftime interval after John had picked up an early caution.
John is known for his trademark aggressiveness and his penchant for physical play. With a yellow card on the books so early in the contest, Nicol said John's early booking played a role in withdrawing him at halftime in Frisco.
"There was that as well," Nicol said. Said John: "I didn't ask [about it]. It felt like we needed a change. I didn't feel like I had played badly; we were defending a lot."
But John dismissed any notion that the yellow card would have had an adverse impact on how he would have performed in the second half of the contest.
"When you get a card in the first minute, it's nothing," John said. "I'm capable of controlling myself. There wasn't anything else in the first half."
And John suggests that his trademark aggressive play won't be changing any time soon.
"Is that going to change me from getting stuck in and playing aggressively," John asked. "I'm an aggressive player. I'm not going to change and Steve hasn't said anything about it to me. That's why he has me out there."
Whether he will be out there on a consistent basis is still to be determined. But his place in the team is still perhaps up in the air after Sunday's 3-1 win against Chicago.
John started on Sunday afternoon manning the left back role in the traditional 3-5-2 with Parkhurst sliding into Shalrie Joseph's defensive midfield role, but he made way for Joe Franchino after 66 minutes as part of a tactical realignment, and shortly thereafter the Revolution scored the first of their two second-half goals on the way to a 3-1 victory.
