The Crew invited scrutiny with its radical offseason overhaul, but it has produced results with its cohesive and diligent defensive shape.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Every morsel of success achieved in Columbus this season has originated with a hefty dose of collective effort.

This industrious blueprint for prosperity emerged in the wake of a traumatic and tumultuous close season. Several key veterans – including the influential Guillermo Barros Schelotto, unsung lynchpin Brian Carroll and club captain Frankie Hejduk – departed in an unpopular purge designed to usher in a new era.

Crew coach Robert Warzycha wanted to build a team that relied more on the sum of its parts than the brilliance of one individual. Moments of inspiration would assume a secondary role to maintaining a compact and organized defensive shape and preventing the opposition from playing easily.

By investing in this earnest and workmanlike approach from back to front, Columbus has surprisingly pushed its way to the top of the Eastern Conference table.

“It's just not the back four – it's a whole team,” Crew defender Julius James said after Saturday's 3-1 victory over New England. “Everyone invested a lot into our defense. Our midfielders work really hard to help us defend, our center mids – Manu [Emmanuel Ekpo], Kevin (Burns) – everyone, it's just a whole team effort.”

The premise and the setup aren't revolutionary – Warzycha has tinkered with a 4-5-1 approach at points this season, but he generally prefers a well-drilled 4-4-2 setup with two holding players in midfield and an emphasis on playing quickly and directly in possession – but they have allied with industry and resolve to produce unexpected success.

The back six, in particular, form a difficult proposition for opposing teams to unlock in front of the generally steady Will Hesmer. The reliable Marshall has produced one of his finest seasons in a career already filled with them and formed a strong and settled partnership with the previously itinerant James. Fullbacks Josh Gardner (a converted winger) and Sebastian Miranda fill out the back four by submitting solid shifts on a regular basis. Ekpo earned a call-up to the Nigerian national team with his assured, coming-of-age displays in central midfield alongside a committee of players including Burns, Rich Balchan and Dejan Rusmir. Tony Tchani could eventually claim the spot beside Ekpo, but a knee injury has prevented him from taking the field since his arrival from Toronto FC last month.

“I think we have a good group of guys who work hard for the other players in the team,” Marshall said. “No one wants to let each other down. We pride ourselves on keeping a zero or keeping it as close to a zero as we can. That goal (against New England) was a little bit of a breakdown, but we pride ourselves on giving (away as few) chances as we can.”

Marshall and the Crew usually succeed in that endeavor because they implement their game plan with a minimum of fuss. It isn't sexy football, but it has helped the Crew withstand a crippling and unrelenting spate of injuries to a variety of important figures without impairing its ability to pick up results.

Despite its success to date with its rather modest deportment, the Crew's dearth of sharpness in the attacking third raises questions about its status as a MLS Cup contender. The primary thrust comes from the wide areas – Eddie Gaven's absence against the Revolution showed how integral he is to the side when ingenuity is required, while Robbie Rogers has come into a decent run of form in the past month or two – with sporadic contributions from a motley assortment of strikers.

(Note: The lack of goals isn't a surprise given the modest amount of endeavor in the overall approach and the personnel at Warzycha's disposal. Andres Mendoza continues to well fall short of expectations – his lack of application and his selfish displays stand out in a team filled with grinders – as the club's lone Designated Player, though he does have seven goals to his credit after one profitable stretch in May and June. Other options such as Jeff Cunningham, Tommy Heinemann and Justin Meram have toiled earnestly without producing consistently in front of goal.)

Warzycha and the Crew technical staff embarked upon an apparently fruitless search to add an attacking piece or two from South America during the summer transfer window (it slams shut today), but they can count on internal reinforcements to bolster the cause. Gaven should return in a week or two after he sustained a right lower leg contusion in a clash with Colorado midfielder Jeff Larentowicz on Aug. 4, while the returning Dilly Duka (right ankle sprain) and Emilio Renteria (left hamstring and left quadriceps) played a vital part in the comeback victory against the Revolution.

Duka's incisive and technical movements off the bench should supplement Gaven and Rogers in midfield, but Renteria probably represents the more pressing arrival given the Crew's needs up front. His robust approach pesters opposing defenses (“No defender is pumped to see him come into the game,” Marshall said) and provides a persistent threat in front of goal. His current, injury-impaired haul of five goals from ten matches suggests he might offer a solution for a side that struggles to find the net on a regular basis.

With Duka and Renteria leading a group of recovering players – including Balchan (left adductor strain), Shaun Francis (left adductor strain), Danny O'Rourke (left knee surgery recovery) and Tchani (if his knee injury heals) – that could strengthen the squad over the coming weeks and months, the Crew can legitimately wonder whether room for growth exists during the stretch run.

“Hopefully, the best is still ahead of us,” Marshall said. “We've been a team that grinds out wins. I think with the personnel that we have – once everyone's healthy – we can be a team that possesses the ball and creates chances, rather than just defending the whole game and hoping to poke a goal in. I think we can really be the aggressor and get after them.”

Even with those potential improvements on the horizon, one thing appears certain as the Crew attempts to cement its current spot atop the Eastern Conference: this side will ultimately go as far as its cohesiveness will take it.

Five Points – Week 22

1. Flashes of things to come from Freddy Adu: The prodigal son returned to MLS after four years in Europe and endured a fairly quiet 62-minute debut for Philadelphia in its 2-2 draw with FC Dallas. Adu trained just once with his teammates and it showed. Neither Adu nor his new teammates could quite figure out what to do in the attacking third upon his immediate introduction to the starting XI. The disjointed debut shouldn't provide too much cause for concern: Adu's ideas – if not his execution on a night when even his clever passes seemed a step out of sync – should help the Union immensely when he settles into the side and sharpens his game with regular match practice.

(Note: Adu will also benefit from operating out of one spot in the Union's fluid attack. Philadelphia manager Peter Nowak shuffled four of his starting front five – Veljko Paunović remained in his rather anonymous role at the point of the Union's diamond midfield – fairly frequently as he attempted to find the right combination. Adu began the match as one of the two front men and switched to the left flank during the first half, but his final destination – and how he moves out of it – remains uncertain as Nowak works through his options and contemplates how to get the best out of all of them.)

2. Speaking of influential moments in Chester...: … FC Dallas basically threw away three points in one of the more entertaining games of the season. FCD carried the play with its combination work through midfield and created a delightful second – Brek Shea grabbed his tenth goal of the campaign after Marvin Chavez hit the post from a sumptuous Maicon Santos feed – on the stroke of halftime. There was only ever one winner in the game from the run of play, but a series of missteps ultimately left the visitors with a solitary point.

Poor decisions at the back ultimately forced Kevin Hartman to conjure up two brilliant saves in stoppage time just to salvage the draw. The usually dependable George John picked up two silly yellow cards for two rash choices and departed with nine minutes to play, while Ugo Ihemelu and Jackson (his name always seems to come up when discussing mental lapses) gave away spot kicks on the edge of the penalty area. A point at Philadelphia isn't a poor result given FCD's crowded fixture list, but it didn't represent the merited return on the evening, either.

3. Three at the back, three in the ledger: Toronto FC coach (and noted 4-3-3 enthusiast) Aron Winter decided to shift to a 3-4-3 to augment his potentially overmatched midfield ahead of the Reds' 1-0 victory over Real Salt Lake at BMO Field on Saturday. The gambit worked well enough in the first half – RSL took quite a bit of time to identify the approach and adjust to it – but the dearth of numbers at the back also allowed RSL to exploit two weaknesses (Torsten Frings' desire to step forward to challenge instead of sweep as the central defender and Andy Iro's general lack of confidence and form at the moment) as the match progressed. Better finishing from Fabian Espindola and Alvaro Saborio would have rendered Winter's tactical wranglings irrelevant, but Joao Plata (the main beneficiary of TFC's tactical strength against RSL: pressing those two outside forwards – and, occasionally, an overlapping player from midfield – against the fullbacks) squeaked home the winner in the late stages to give the Reds an improbable win.

4. These are the breaks that go against a team that hasn't won in 10 games: San Jose midfielder Sam Cronin caught two horrible breaks as the 10-man Earthquakes extended their winless drought to 11 games with a 2-1 home defeat to Colorado: he conceded a desperately unlucky penalty after a cross hit his trailing arm as he slid past the play and he procured a suspect red card for a clumsy, two-footed tackle that probably best falls into the category of “don't give the referee a chance to make a decision.” Those two events – plus Jeff Larentowicz's free kick winner straight through Simon Dawkins' legs – meant a fairly decent effort from San Jose ultimately went for naught.

5. It's all about the fundamentals: Portland has struggled defensively for much of the campaign (third-worst in the league with 37 goals conceded) and showed why in the buildup to Houston's second goal in the Dynamo's 2-1 win on Sunday night. The Timbers enjoyed a four-versus-three numerical advantage in the left corner despite falling asleep on a throw-in, yet those four players somehow permitted Brad Davis and Colin Clark to combine easily to set the table for an unmarked Brian Ching to finish off the move. Credit the Dynamo for some neat work – Clark's nutmeg pass through Lovel Palmer's legs exhibited both cheek and skill – in tight spaces, but the Timbers need to avoid those momentary lapses in concentration, close down players more quickly and track their runners more diligently in order to shore up things up at the back.

Kyle McCarthy writes the Monday MLS Breakdown and frequently writes opinion pieces during the week for Goal.com. He also covers the New England Revolution for the Boston Herald and MLSsoccer.com. Contact him with your questions or comments at kyle.mccarthy@goal.com and follow him on Twitter by clicking here.