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| All I want to know: will I like the ending? |
Give a team two pillow-soft chances, you give up two goals. Give a pig a pancake and….honestly, I have no idea, I’ve only seen the cover of that book.
Obviously, that was not ideal, but, for me, the whole thing had the feel of the Los Angeles Galaxy was due to win, the Portland Timbers were due a loss. As the kids say, shit happens, and the Galaxy wins at home 2-0. The Timbers had some points to burn, they’re not gonna catch the Seattle Sounders, the road ahead is pretty favorable, and so on. Pick, move on, and, for fuck’s sake, play Diego Valeri earlier if you’re gonna play him at all. Maybe try attacking defending with seven while attacking with three skilled players pushed way the fuck up for counters toward the end of a game. I don’t know. I only manage teams online and they do awesome. On toddler mode. And I digress.
Full disclosure, I only watched half that game, stared at some stats (where I saw what I wanted: fairly even for shots on goal and winning the duels), so take all notes below with due caution, etc. At the same time, these are mostly general thoughts about Portland’s stretch run - which, for the record, conncludes with: v Vancouver, at Colorado, v San Jose, at Real Salt Lake, v Austin FC. And, yes, I typed more of the names out to celebrate not forever operating under 280 characters. Some notes…and I mean beyond obvious stuff like, “Blanco RULZ” (and he does) or “mistakes hurt the Timbers tonight.” Wait…moving on…
Van Rankin Van Rankles
Because I saw Steve Clark make two saves (at least) that easily could have gone in (and yet two shit goals did), I’m comfortable accepting the Timbers had plenty of other ways to lose this one…but, Van Rankin. He hasn’t fulfilled my expectations on either side of the ball. He’s not an outright liability either, it’s just….yeah.
The Paredes’ Puzzle
My biggest beef with Cristhian Paredes is that he doesn’t any one thing well. In some ways, he embodies adequacy. The real mystery to me comes with his failure to develop the one skill that gives him his best crack at securing long-term gainful employment. He gets decent power into his shots, but he’s no marksman; he sees the field around him all right and makes reasonable decisions, but he doesn’t often hit the kind of forward pass that unlocks a defense: the sum of his attacking skills says defensive midfielder, but he lacks the appetite for hunting the ball and his tackling generally looks ineffectual and with potential for high-risk - one of the game’s rarer combinations. All in all, I’d call this Paredes best season, in that I’m starting to see some path to a future, which beats what I used to see. He’ll have to figure it out, but I think he might have a role.
Some Time for Santiago
He had moments out there, Santiago Moreno, moves where he beat one defender and made the second one sweat. He ran into trouble when he tried to beat his third, but, even if his decision-making and passing didn’t come through, his technical strengths showed. I don’t know what that’ll do for the team in the here and now, but…maybe it points to what they need to work on?
Activate…Someone, Go Places
Yimmi Chara had a decent stretch starting about six games ago, but he was invisible tonight. I didn’t see Jaroslaw Niezgoda’s first half, and Dairon Asprilla looked run down, but, with Portland's defense looking sound overall - at least when it’s not stupid (it’s been nine games since the last meltdown - e.g., the road loss at Austin) - and players like Sebastian Blanco (who does things like this) and Felipe Mora (a near-goal force multiplier), and Dairon Asprilla having his best-ever season, I feel like that leaves Portland one solid attacking player short of having a shot at silverware. Some wins have been narrow, and tonight sure as hell wasn’t great, but there’s enough quality and enough spring in the Timbers’ collective legs for this team to ride a defense that allows something less than 1.5 goals in a game. If they can get one more attacking threat on the field, even if they have a player who can fill in for Asprilla when he looks justifiably leggy, it could take them somewhere.
That’s all I’ve got for this one. And, damn, not having to squeeze that into 1,680 characters (more or less) felt good. I’m still confident the Timbers will make the playoffs. The question will be, how they look when they get there.
Till the next one…
Obviously, that was not ideal, but, for me, the whole thing had the feel of the Los Angeles Galaxy was due to win, the Portland Timbers were due a loss. As the kids say, shit happens, and the Galaxy wins at home 2-0. The Timbers had some points to burn, they’re not gonna catch the Seattle Sounders, the road ahead is pretty favorable, and so on. Pick, move on, and, for fuck’s sake, play Diego Valeri earlier if you’re gonna play him at all. Maybe try attacking defending with seven while attacking with three skilled players pushed way the fuck up for counters toward the end of a game. I don’t know. I only manage teams online and they do awesome. On toddler mode. And I digress.
Full disclosure, I only watched half that game, stared at some stats (where I saw what I wanted: fairly even for shots on goal and winning the duels), so take all notes below with due caution, etc. At the same time, these are mostly general thoughts about Portland’s stretch run - which, for the record, conncludes with: v Vancouver, at Colorado, v San Jose, at Real Salt Lake, v Austin FC. And, yes, I typed more of the names out to celebrate not forever operating under 280 characters. Some notes…and I mean beyond obvious stuff like, “Blanco RULZ” (and he does) or “mistakes hurt the Timbers tonight.” Wait…moving on…
Van Rankin Van Rankles
Because I saw Steve Clark make two saves (at least) that easily could have gone in (and yet two shit goals did), I’m comfortable accepting the Timbers had plenty of other ways to lose this one…but, Van Rankin. He hasn’t fulfilled my expectations on either side of the ball. He’s not an outright liability either, it’s just….yeah.
The Paredes’ Puzzle
My biggest beef with Cristhian Paredes is that he doesn’t any one thing well. In some ways, he embodies adequacy. The real mystery to me comes with his failure to develop the one skill that gives him his best crack at securing long-term gainful employment. He gets decent power into his shots, but he’s no marksman; he sees the field around him all right and makes reasonable decisions, but he doesn’t often hit the kind of forward pass that unlocks a defense: the sum of his attacking skills says defensive midfielder, but he lacks the appetite for hunting the ball and his tackling generally looks ineffectual and with potential for high-risk - one of the game’s rarer combinations. All in all, I’d call this Paredes best season, in that I’m starting to see some path to a future, which beats what I used to see. He’ll have to figure it out, but I think he might have a role.
Some Time for Santiago
He had moments out there, Santiago Moreno, moves where he beat one defender and made the second one sweat. He ran into trouble when he tried to beat his third, but, even if his decision-making and passing didn’t come through, his technical strengths showed. I don’t know what that’ll do for the team in the here and now, but…maybe it points to what they need to work on?
Activate…Someone, Go Places
Yimmi Chara had a decent stretch starting about six games ago, but he was invisible tonight. I didn’t see Jaroslaw Niezgoda’s first half, and Dairon Asprilla looked run down, but, with Portland's defense looking sound overall - at least when it’s not stupid (it’s been nine games since the last meltdown - e.g., the road loss at Austin) - and players like Sebastian Blanco (who does things like this) and Felipe Mora (a near-goal force multiplier), and Dairon Asprilla having his best-ever season, I feel like that leaves Portland one solid attacking player short of having a shot at silverware. Some wins have been narrow, and tonight sure as hell wasn’t great, but there’s enough quality and enough spring in the Timbers’ collective legs for this team to ride a defense that allows something less than 1.5 goals in a game. If they can get one more attacking threat on the field, even if they have a player who can fill in for Asprilla when he looks justifiably leggy, it could take them somewhere.
That’s all I’ve got for this one. And, damn, not having to squeeze that into 1,680 characters (more or less) felt good. I’m still confident the Timbers will make the playoffs. The question will be, how they look when they get there.
Till the next one…
Paredes (and the alternatives) seem like why we live (and die) as a counter-attacking team. When he and Yimmi are both nonentities on the field for a game, then option B (and C and D) are to catch LAG on the counter. And that means maybe 4-5 good chances to score against LAG, who looked strong in the middle of the pitch.
ReplyDeleteI've mentally defended Van Rankin as being not as bad as his critics claim. But he actually does make a nice salary- 10 times that of Bonilla, twice that of Bravo and as much as Yimmi. So, for value received, I get it.
Valeri is a wistful ghost of the player of three years ago so it looks like we're just running out the clock on this season for him, heading to an honorable retirement. Makes me sad, but we'll still have that wonderful stretch from 2013-2018 to reminisce over.
I hear you on Valeri. As much as I feel like there's a way to make him useful, it's hard to see the cost side of that equation when fans only see him for 5 minutes or less per game. Could just be the end, in the end. On Van Rankin, I was really high on him at the start of the season, but he's looked aimless on both sides of the ball since, which...has frustrated me. The thing with Paredes is tricky, in that he looks better on the attacking side this season than he has in the past, while being well-short of a game-breaker. There's a place for that in a team, but how that fits into the Timbers as they are? Feels like a different, and bigger question. Thanks for reading! It's fun batting these things around again!
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