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I’ll commit to putting the same amount of effort into this post that the Portland Timbers put into today’s game. Well, maybe a little more. Going the other way, I can’t fuck up the set pieces…or can I?
I’m going to start with some guesses on the stats - and, pinky promise, I’m not cheating. I’m guessing the Timbers passing accuracy dipped below…70%, that they lost the duels count handily, that they had fewer than…8 shots total, and their xG never exceeded…1.2. Right, let’s see how I did.
Shit. Wrong on literally all counts…and in what other-dimensional hell did Portland get four shots on goal? Ah, a review of the highlights dug up Valeri’s free-kick and Jeremy Ebobisse with that near-put-back in the 78th; as for the other two, they’ll go missing on account of the search party losing interest. On the one hand, I got all that wrong, so never listen to anything I say. On the other, that speaks both directly and bluntly to what I thought of Portland’s afternoon. How the Philadelphia Union won the game only 3-0, I’ll never know.
Broadly, everybody wearing blue looked tired, nobody looked good, you don’t want to hand any player man of the match honors from fear 1) of how he’d take it, or 2) that he’d pass on the offer. And why in the name of humanity would you review the video? Call it a bad trip, leave it wherever Merritt Paulson buries the bodies and come back on June 19 like it never happened - ideally with revived personnel.
Is it even worth breaking down this game? I saw at least a dozen people joke that the Timbers should practice set pieces, but the here-and-now answers to that issue strike me as fairly obvious: 1) never have Felipe Mora mark Kacper Przybylko (first goal, and hold this thought*), and 2) don’t play Philadelphia any time soon. Portland addressed the marking assignments almost immediately, but Jeremy Ebobisse didn’t do any better against Big Kacper, sadly, leaving Sergio Santos with nothing more to do than muscle through and power a point-blank shot past…shit, was that Mora standing dumbly in the middle of the goal? In the specific sense of giants versus boys, the game played out like one of those preseason warm-ups when an MLS team plays the kids from the college catchment area. It didn’t matter that Philly couldn’t craft elegant break-throughs in the run of play, because they had a one-man match-up advantage on set pieces that Portland couldn't solve. Like kids two years out of high school playing grown-up adults playing angrily on commission, Portland as a whole looked smaller on set-pieces. And, with Larrys Mabiala missing, maybe they were.
* Mora deserves some real kicking for letting Przybylko in clean on Philly’s first goal - I hate to use the phrase, he didn’t even try, but… - and it would have stood out if the same bug hadn’t bitten the rest of the team. Rare good moments aside, the entire Timbers starting eleven played liked they’d already settled into that killer Air B ‘n’ B they booked for the FIFA international break. Today’s performance had the cutting edge of a sugar spoon, and on both sides of the ball. That phenomenon of being two steps behind everything gifted Philly their third goal - both Diego Valeri and Eryk Williamson had a dead-cat reaction to (it couldn’t be again, surely) Corey Burke’s header toward Logan Ketterer’s goal on Philly's third, back-breaking goal.
* It was no less pervasive on the other side of the ball: badly as the passing sucked (I hereby appeal the alleged 80.8% passing accuracy, RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!), Portland players struggled with providing good options; I can’t count the number of times Philly effectively isolated a Timbers player on the ball and went in for the kill. On the plus side, that only really applied when Portland hit its nadir, which lasted from…oh, the 10th minute to somewhere around the…70th…minute? The kindest thing I can say is that Portland clawed back some dignity with a pointless, late flurry just after the 70th minute, but “pointless” remains the key word in that discussion. They were dead every way but mathematically eight minutes before that....
Look, if this presented as anything like a systemic problem, or something that looked the beginning of a doom spiral, I’d be arranging for dry-cleaning at the end of this post. I’m taking solace in the fact that I can’t remember the last time I saw Portland hand in such a collective turd of a performance. Gun to my head, I’d say the loud, late-season hiccup against the Colorado Rapids, but, larger point, the Timbers don’t look that winded and confused all that often, so I’ll just file this one under a bad day at the office and move on…of which, here, “bad day” means showing up to work late and still-drunk from the night before and vomiting onto the side of the trash can in the middle of the 10 a.m. meeting. I trust they won’t look like this after the break, basically, even without anyone returning to the line-up…
…what’s that? They’re hosting Sporting Kansas City the first game back? In that case, let’s hope they get a body or two back for that one because SKC has been doing the odd thing or three.
Bottom line, I’m willing to forget this one, at least so long as no one tries to come out and defend any part of it. That said, and in closing, I do have one relevant concern…
Am I alone in thinking that other teams see Claudio Bravo as a weakness? This was the second weekend, at a minimum, that the opposition targeted his side of the pitch; this was also not the first time that worked out pretty well. While I’m all for “give the kid time” - trust me on that, I watch FC Cincinnati every week - I have vague memories of the Timbers FO touting Bravo as a potential “top 5 player” at his position. At this point, my response would be, I’m not even sure they’re getting Top 20 out of Bravo. Teams have to try to improve - and I get that, I do - and I don’t know the details as to why Portland shipped both Jorge Villafana and Marco Farfan in the off-season, but I also very much don’t see the thought process behind discarding players who turned in reliable/predictable performances at their position, unless you had some clear improvement lined up.
Related, I had concerns about both fullbacks tonight. I’ve come down a couple steps from the “jet-pack fullbacks” enthusiasm of the early season…and I may yet come down a couple steps more if neither Bravo nor Juancarlos Van Rankin can improve on one side of the ball or the other.
Also, and I’m going to whisper this one…Valeri couldn’t keep up in this game. True story (or least a sincere opinion), he looked as far off the play as he did in the CCL ties against Club America. Every part of me wants to chalk that up to Portland’s general issues with player-to-player connectivity tonight, but, again…look, no one likes it, but we all know it’s coming. Going the other way, the malaise was absolutely general tonight…even Yimmi Chara looked lethargic as a middle-aged dad three beers in on that Newport, Oregon rental.
Till the next one, and I hope it looks a hell of a lot better. On the plus side - or on whatever side you want to call it, here are what the Timbers have from now till the end of July:
v Sporting KC, @ Houston Dynamo, v Minnesota United FC, @ Austin FC, v FC Dallas, v Los Angeles FC, @ Minnesota, @ LA Galaxy
If they don’t get at least…let’s go with half the 24 points on offer, then I’ll start shitting my pants. Till then, I’m content to let them do it and clean it up where I can.
I’m going to start with some guesses on the stats - and, pinky promise, I’m not cheating. I’m guessing the Timbers passing accuracy dipped below…70%, that they lost the duels count handily, that they had fewer than…8 shots total, and their xG never exceeded…1.2. Right, let’s see how I did.
Shit. Wrong on literally all counts…and in what other-dimensional hell did Portland get four shots on goal? Ah, a review of the highlights dug up Valeri’s free-kick and Jeremy Ebobisse with that near-put-back in the 78th; as for the other two, they’ll go missing on account of the search party losing interest. On the one hand, I got all that wrong, so never listen to anything I say. On the other, that speaks both directly and bluntly to what I thought of Portland’s afternoon. How the Philadelphia Union won the game only 3-0, I’ll never know.
Broadly, everybody wearing blue looked tired, nobody looked good, you don’t want to hand any player man of the match honors from fear 1) of how he’d take it, or 2) that he’d pass on the offer. And why in the name of humanity would you review the video? Call it a bad trip, leave it wherever Merritt Paulson buries the bodies and come back on June 19 like it never happened - ideally with revived personnel.
Is it even worth breaking down this game? I saw at least a dozen people joke that the Timbers should practice set pieces, but the here-and-now answers to that issue strike me as fairly obvious: 1) never have Felipe Mora mark Kacper Przybylko (first goal, and hold this thought*), and 2) don’t play Philadelphia any time soon. Portland addressed the marking assignments almost immediately, but Jeremy Ebobisse didn’t do any better against Big Kacper, sadly, leaving Sergio Santos with nothing more to do than muscle through and power a point-blank shot past…shit, was that Mora standing dumbly in the middle of the goal? In the specific sense of giants versus boys, the game played out like one of those preseason warm-ups when an MLS team plays the kids from the college catchment area. It didn’t matter that Philly couldn’t craft elegant break-throughs in the run of play, because they had a one-man match-up advantage on set pieces that Portland couldn't solve. Like kids two years out of high school playing grown-up adults playing angrily on commission, Portland as a whole looked smaller on set-pieces. And, with Larrys Mabiala missing, maybe they were.
* Mora deserves some real kicking for letting Przybylko in clean on Philly’s first goal - I hate to use the phrase, he didn’t even try, but… - and it would have stood out if the same bug hadn’t bitten the rest of the team. Rare good moments aside, the entire Timbers starting eleven played liked they’d already settled into that killer Air B ‘n’ B they booked for the FIFA international break. Today’s performance had the cutting edge of a sugar spoon, and on both sides of the ball. That phenomenon of being two steps behind everything gifted Philly their third goal - both Diego Valeri and Eryk Williamson had a dead-cat reaction to (it couldn’t be again, surely) Corey Burke’s header toward Logan Ketterer’s goal on Philly's third, back-breaking goal.
* It was no less pervasive on the other side of the ball: badly as the passing sucked (I hereby appeal the alleged 80.8% passing accuracy, RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!), Portland players struggled with providing good options; I can’t count the number of times Philly effectively isolated a Timbers player on the ball and went in for the kill. On the plus side, that only really applied when Portland hit its nadir, which lasted from…oh, the 10th minute to somewhere around the…70th…minute? The kindest thing I can say is that Portland clawed back some dignity with a pointless, late flurry just after the 70th minute, but “pointless” remains the key word in that discussion. They were dead every way but mathematically eight minutes before that....
Look, if this presented as anything like a systemic problem, or something that looked the beginning of a doom spiral, I’d be arranging for dry-cleaning at the end of this post. I’m taking solace in the fact that I can’t remember the last time I saw Portland hand in such a collective turd of a performance. Gun to my head, I’d say the loud, late-season hiccup against the Colorado Rapids, but, larger point, the Timbers don’t look that winded and confused all that often, so I’ll just file this one under a bad day at the office and move on…of which, here, “bad day” means showing up to work late and still-drunk from the night before and vomiting onto the side of the trash can in the middle of the 10 a.m. meeting. I trust they won’t look like this after the break, basically, even without anyone returning to the line-up…
…what’s that? They’re hosting Sporting Kansas City the first game back? In that case, let’s hope they get a body or two back for that one because SKC has been doing the odd thing or three.
Bottom line, I’m willing to forget this one, at least so long as no one tries to come out and defend any part of it. That said, and in closing, I do have one relevant concern…
Am I alone in thinking that other teams see Claudio Bravo as a weakness? This was the second weekend, at a minimum, that the opposition targeted his side of the pitch; this was also not the first time that worked out pretty well. While I’m all for “give the kid time” - trust me on that, I watch FC Cincinnati every week - I have vague memories of the Timbers FO touting Bravo as a potential “top 5 player” at his position. At this point, my response would be, I’m not even sure they’re getting Top 20 out of Bravo. Teams have to try to improve - and I get that, I do - and I don’t know the details as to why Portland shipped both Jorge Villafana and Marco Farfan in the off-season, but I also very much don’t see the thought process behind discarding players who turned in reliable/predictable performances at their position, unless you had some clear improvement lined up.
Related, I had concerns about both fullbacks tonight. I’ve come down a couple steps from the “jet-pack fullbacks” enthusiasm of the early season…and I may yet come down a couple steps more if neither Bravo nor Juancarlos Van Rankin can improve on one side of the ball or the other.
Also, and I’m going to whisper this one…Valeri couldn’t keep up in this game. True story (or least a sincere opinion), he looked as far off the play as he did in the CCL ties against Club America. Every part of me wants to chalk that up to Portland’s general issues with player-to-player connectivity tonight, but, again…look, no one likes it, but we all know it’s coming. Going the other way, the malaise was absolutely general tonight…even Yimmi Chara looked lethargic as a middle-aged dad three beers in on that Newport, Oregon rental.
Till the next one, and I hope it looks a hell of a lot better. On the plus side - or on whatever side you want to call it, here are what the Timbers have from now till the end of July:
v Sporting KC, @ Houston Dynamo, v Minnesota United FC, @ Austin FC, v FC Dallas, v Los Angeles FC, @ Minnesota, @ LA Galaxy
If they don’t get at least…let’s go with half the 24 points on offer, then I’ll start shitting my pants. Till then, I’m content to let them do it and clean it up where I can.
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