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| They say it's a marathon, not a sprint... |
After going up 2-0 in a game they controlled, but without playing all that well, the Portland Timbers fell apart one goal at a time to hand the Vancouver Whitecaps a 3-2 win at Providence Park. Portland didn’t look sharp all night, so, when the ‘Caps raised their energy…pfft.
The broadcast booth talked up Brian White coming on for Lucas Cavallini as the turning point, but I caught a whiff of something different fairly early in the game. To paraphrase a tweet:
“I can’t read the Timbers’ mood. Is it [calm] or complacency?”
The original word for the one between the brackets was “confidence,” but this performance never looked confident…hold on, is misplaced confidence a long form version of complacency? At any rate, it didn’t feel so unreasonable to believe the way the Timbers could hold its shit together after Deiber Caicedo pulled one back for Vancouver on a hero goal off a sprint up the gut; again, they controlled the first half. That doesn’t mean the patterns were actually encouraging - they weren’t - but, you know, shake off the cobwebs, step up the pace, etc.
I just realized that only 13 minutes passed between Caicedo’s goal and the equalizer. When Brian White saw the cross coming before Juancarlos Van Rankin and scored, he didn’t do anything that every other player in dark blue hadn’t done since the second half whistle blew: Whitecaps players beat Timbers to the ball all over the field, as if they got a pep-talk at the half (or their asses chewed to pieces) and Gio lined up a round of double shots of Goldschlager instead.
Yeah, yeah, the penalty kick. The Timbers would have been lucky to get one point by that time, and they wound up with zero as a result. And I don’t want to spare anyone from blame. I saw Dairon Asprilla go less than his usual all-in on at least two 50/50s in Vancouver’s defensive third. That shit’s contagious and, by the end of the first half, it bit every player on the field sporting a smart white shirt and snazzy green shorts. If only their play matched…
As for Portland’s goals, they only got the first because Vancouver laid off (nice use of the gift, though), and the second because the gods intervened and bounced the ball to Asprilla. Related, I just confirmed the sub-titillating xG your eyes already saw.
So…where from here? The Timbers remain in 4th on 46 points, but now they’ve got varying degrees of hot breath panting on the back of their necks, one point at a time (i.e., the Galaxy have 45 points, Minnesota 45, Vancouver 43, Salt Lake 42). Moreover, I only feel good about getting wins out of two of their four remaining games - e.g., at Colorado, v San Jose, at RSL, v Austin - and will leave it to readers to sort out where the points seem likeliest to shake loose because, gods above and below, I’m not good at it.
As I tweeted toward the end, thus endeth the Timbers’ momentum. Both this game and the road game at the Galaxy should have yielded something north of two points - and four points felt like a realistic ideal. Instead, they stare at empty hands.
I read something this week about Portland getting lucky in recent weeks, at least according to the numbers. This feels like confirmation. It ain’t over by any means, Real Salt Lake has four points’ worth of work to do, and so on, but this isn’t how a team wants to step into the playoffs.
Now, random shit…
1) Relationship to the Mean. And Meaning.
Sure, a typo or three undermined my attempt to determine the league average on goals for and against, but, with 48 goals scored and 49 goals allowed, the Timbers exceed my ball park average - 41 gf/ga - on both measures. Now, the fun thing: take away just one result - say, the Timbers’ freakish 6-1 drubbing of RSL - and you get to something - i.e., the fact they’re barely above average on goals scored, but still deeper into the wrong side of average on goals allowed. Which also explains their return to a negative goal differential.
Portland might not be at risk of the ultimate failure - e.g., missing the playoffs (also, don’t you fucking dare make those famous last words) - but, again, one has to wonder if, all things considered, this doesn’t look like another one-and-done post-season.
2) Related Thereto
With the exception of that second half, Portland has moved the ball south to north with decent regularity in recent games. What they haven’t done is create good, reliable attacking sequences - again, outside the demolition of RSL. In other words, when’s the last time you looked at this team and wondered about how you got so lucky as a soccer fan? There have been enough heroics and, yea, we’ve been blessed with the best season of Dairon Asprilla’s career, without question, Mora’s been solid, etc. And yet…
3) Yeah, Still Obsessed
I thought Cristhian Paredes had a good game, and on both sides of the ball, until his legs crapped out. His legs had ample company, of course - a whole damn team’s worth, when you get down to it - and, that miracle ball over the top to Yimmi Chara aside, his forward passing was good, but not anything that looked like either solving a problem or adding a new dimension to the Timbers’ attack. Still, he snuffed out enough shit in the game’s middle passage to make me feel better about the future…
…and then that dried up. With everything.
The new kids still give me (proportionate) angst (by which I mean, this won’t ruin my life, you can’t hurt me, I watch FC Cincinnati, but also I can handle a tansition). Long story short, I see the Timbers, and their fans, going through some proverbial shit in the seasons ahead. Unless the person who replaces Gavin Wilkinson can strike gold…
…which brings up another point: if this is the state of things, was Gavin really so great at his job?
The broadcast booth talked up Brian White coming on for Lucas Cavallini as the turning point, but I caught a whiff of something different fairly early in the game. To paraphrase a tweet:
“I can’t read the Timbers’ mood. Is it [calm] or complacency?”
The original word for the one between the brackets was “confidence,” but this performance never looked confident…hold on, is misplaced confidence a long form version of complacency? At any rate, it didn’t feel so unreasonable to believe the way the Timbers could hold its shit together after Deiber Caicedo pulled one back for Vancouver on a hero goal off a sprint up the gut; again, they controlled the first half. That doesn’t mean the patterns were actually encouraging - they weren’t - but, you know, shake off the cobwebs, step up the pace, etc.
I just realized that only 13 minutes passed between Caicedo’s goal and the equalizer. When Brian White saw the cross coming before Juancarlos Van Rankin and scored, he didn’t do anything that every other player in dark blue hadn’t done since the second half whistle blew: Whitecaps players beat Timbers to the ball all over the field, as if they got a pep-talk at the half (or their asses chewed to pieces) and Gio lined up a round of double shots of Goldschlager instead.
Yeah, yeah, the penalty kick. The Timbers would have been lucky to get one point by that time, and they wound up with zero as a result. And I don’t want to spare anyone from blame. I saw Dairon Asprilla go less than his usual all-in on at least two 50/50s in Vancouver’s defensive third. That shit’s contagious and, by the end of the first half, it bit every player on the field sporting a smart white shirt and snazzy green shorts. If only their play matched…
As for Portland’s goals, they only got the first because Vancouver laid off (nice use of the gift, though), and the second because the gods intervened and bounced the ball to Asprilla. Related, I just confirmed the sub-titillating xG your eyes already saw.
So…where from here? The Timbers remain in 4th on 46 points, but now they’ve got varying degrees of hot breath panting on the back of their necks, one point at a time (i.e., the Galaxy have 45 points, Minnesota 45, Vancouver 43, Salt Lake 42). Moreover, I only feel good about getting wins out of two of their four remaining games - e.g., at Colorado, v San Jose, at RSL, v Austin - and will leave it to readers to sort out where the points seem likeliest to shake loose because, gods above and below, I’m not good at it.
As I tweeted toward the end, thus endeth the Timbers’ momentum. Both this game and the road game at the Galaxy should have yielded something north of two points - and four points felt like a realistic ideal. Instead, they stare at empty hands.
I read something this week about Portland getting lucky in recent weeks, at least according to the numbers. This feels like confirmation. It ain’t over by any means, Real Salt Lake has four points’ worth of work to do, and so on, but this isn’t how a team wants to step into the playoffs.
Now, random shit…
1) Relationship to the Mean. And Meaning.
Sure, a typo or three undermined my attempt to determine the league average on goals for and against, but, with 48 goals scored and 49 goals allowed, the Timbers exceed my ball park average - 41 gf/ga - on both measures. Now, the fun thing: take away just one result - say, the Timbers’ freakish 6-1 drubbing of RSL - and you get to something - i.e., the fact they’re barely above average on goals scored, but still deeper into the wrong side of average on goals allowed. Which also explains their return to a negative goal differential.
Portland might not be at risk of the ultimate failure - e.g., missing the playoffs (also, don’t you fucking dare make those famous last words) - but, again, one has to wonder if, all things considered, this doesn’t look like another one-and-done post-season.
2) Related Thereto
With the exception of that second half, Portland has moved the ball south to north with decent regularity in recent games. What they haven’t done is create good, reliable attacking sequences - again, outside the demolition of RSL. In other words, when’s the last time you looked at this team and wondered about how you got so lucky as a soccer fan? There have been enough heroics and, yea, we’ve been blessed with the best season of Dairon Asprilla’s career, without question, Mora’s been solid, etc. And yet…
3) Yeah, Still Obsessed
I thought Cristhian Paredes had a good game, and on both sides of the ball, until his legs crapped out. His legs had ample company, of course - a whole damn team’s worth, when you get down to it - and, that miracle ball over the top to Yimmi Chara aside, his forward passing was good, but not anything that looked like either solving a problem or adding a new dimension to the Timbers’ attack. Still, he snuffed out enough shit in the game’s middle passage to make me feel better about the future…
…and then that dried up. With everything.
The new kids still give me (proportionate) angst (by which I mean, this won’t ruin my life, you can’t hurt me, I watch FC Cincinnati, but also I can handle a tansition). Long story short, I see the Timbers, and their fans, going through some proverbial shit in the seasons ahead. Unless the person who replaces Gavin Wilkinson can strike gold…
…which brings up another point: if this is the state of things, was Gavin really so great at his job?
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