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| I, like you, see more than one problem... |
Never has a final whistle sounded more like a choir of angels. With that, let us pick the corn out of that piece of shit.
I’d like to begin by thanking the people involved for the few highlights. First up, Bill Tuiloma for delivering the Portland Timbers their one and literally only highlight with an elegant free-kick early in the second half. Second, let’s have a big round of applause for Madison Shanley, who (from what I gather) sang the national anthem while wearing a very red t-shirt with the equally relevant words, “YOU KNEW” in bold black across the front. Way to use the platform and keep on shining you crazy diamond.
Up next, yes, I think the Timbers had two very reasonable shouts for penalty kicks for which, as I see it, PRO Referees should have to answer for not calling - much as they did for a blown call in New York City FC's loss to Toronto FC. The first came when Yimmi Chara got cut down in the area…somewhere after the 73rd minute (I only know because, according to the chronology of my notes, it happened after Eryk Williamson came on for Sebastian Blanco), and, yes, I’d really like to hear the basis for not making that call. The other came later when…again, I apologize, but I’d lost interest at this point and I don’t recall which Timber had made the run, but the Los Angeles Galaxy’s Nick DePuy’s arm, again, very visibly made contact with and/or stopped the progress of a cross, and from an unnatural position. So, yeah, that would have been two penalty kicks to the Portland Timbers and a well-better-than-average chance of seeing an afternoon of mud-wrestling end in a draw. Keep racking up the "significant officiating errors," PRO referees! Really adding value out there. Sadly, I’ve got bigger fish to fry and duller axes to grind…deep breath…
I don’t give a shit about the blown penalty calls because the Timbers got the result they deserved. They lost 1-3 today, in Portland, against a Galaxy team that looked smarter, sharper and that executed better down to the last man; 1-5 wouldn’t have been remotely unfair. The Timbers, meanwhile, were fucking terrible, and uninspired besides - and I very much mean that down to the last man. Nothing can redeem that performance but better ones in future games and, by all the gods in all known religions, that had better fucking start with a change in the game-plan. Happily, I cataloged the myriad failings in a twitter thread, so I can focus on the damning and persistent issues that have led to what I’d like to think even the most hopeful Timbers fan can agree has been a bad start to the season.
Portland started the game pressing and I’d like to start by flagging that as something of an original sin, even if they had some moderate success with it early. The Timbers got burned by their own bag of tricks - transition goals - first by a Chicharito toe-poke at the back post, then by a Tuiloma own-goal, both delivered by LA’s Samuel Grandsir. I saw people shit all over Pablo Bonilla - and, yes, the young man had an absolute train-wreck of a night - but Dario Zuparic struggled with Chicharito’s movement through much of the first half and I feel comfortable calling that an equally proximate cause. LA’s second, on the other hand, the Tuiloma own-goal, feels like the skeleton key today’s defeat because it contained all the sins that plagued Portland’s first half - e.g., the persistent, wrongheaded (literal) labor of trying to force the ball down LA’s right, having too many players committed forward in a half-coordinated manner, the ball popping loose and getting passed to Grandsir in the vast acreage that Portland abandoned on their own right for the entirety of the first half and, yes, transition.
Bonilla picked up a soft, but typically rash red card late in the first half, of course - and that's a whole goddamn buffet's worth of food for thought - and, yes, there were those uncalled penalties, but I’d argue that any re-write of the above, largely accurate narrative risks taking entirely justified pressure off both the Timbers as a team and Giovanni Savarese as a coach. Portland’s attack, in particular, has needed four unlikely goals, two of them miracles, just to keep ahead of abysmal; three goals for strikes me as a more accurate read on the present rate of return. LA’s Mark Delgado saw red by way of a second yellow card just over 15 minutes after Bonilla’s idiotic sending off, but nothing that happened after made me feel any better about the Timbers’ collective performance today. I haven’t moved on to seeing the Timbers as a bad team, necessarily - though they will be downgraded, and on the grounds that it'll take a handful of the redeeming performances before I see them going anywhere but the middle of nowhere this season. Those are the rules, people...
I, like you, know the Timbers aren’t fully healthy, particularly in the attack, and they were at least some combination of two players short in defense today, but, had Andres Perea not rescued last weekend’s result, today’s loss would have been the third straight, and Portland played two of those games at home. The trends suck at present. So, let’s dig into why…and I’ll get to LA’s third goal below.
Playing the Cross When You Don’t Know How to Do It
There was a moment - right before Yimmi’s befouled run into the box, if I’m not mistaken - where a Timbers player situated somewhere near or about the corner of LA’s 18-yard box did the playing equivalent of shutting his brain off and punting a cross into the area. They tried this about five times in a 10-second span and it would have taken a minor miracle, one on the level of a Yimmi Chara bike, for that ball to find the right player and for that player to beat LA’s ‘keeper, Jonathan Bond, from about 12 yards out. Sadly, that pales next to the broader folly of the Timbers 2022 first-choice approach toward goal of playing the ball to the end-line and floating a cross to two or three Timbers, and with both of them making something too close to the same run - i.e., crashing toward the goal from six yards out, or less. It’s a fucking rare thing to see a Timbers attacker hold his run to offer another option toward the top of the opposition’s penalty area just to, y'know, maybe mix things up a bit. It’s ever rarer to see the attack as a whole attempt to pull the ball back and try to move around the defense laterally - as, to give a highly present example, the Galaxy did on its first goal. I have no goddamn idea how Gio, et. al., have failed to coach something as simple and obvious as varying attacking runs toward goal after all these years, but I see what I see no matter how badly I want to unsee it.
The Timbers don’t attempt that same low-percentage on every move; they actually attempt an equally low-percentage move of slipping the ball to a wide player overlapping either around the opposition fullback, or between the same and the center backs. When it comes off, it blows apart the opposition’s defensive scheme. If only it came off more often than once on the lunar calendar. And that’s why…
I Blame Society, Society Is to Blame
I’ve seen Jaroslaw Niezgoda get some shit online for his ongoing failure to find the game. I might blame him too, but I keep seeing him get the ball in positions where, to put it bluntly, he's very likely to to lose it. It amounts to setting a man up to fail as often as possible over 90+ minutes; Niezgoda simply doesn't play well with his back to goal, and I think Savarese is the only person on the planet who hasn't sorted that out yet. To put that another way: wishing Niezgoda was Felipe Mora will never make him so. As such, Doesn’t figuring out how to play with Niezgoda as the lone forward he is make more sense than that? Training a player to do things he has never done well makes one hell of a lot less sense, in my mind, than adjusting the team’s tactics to adjust to the forward you’re starting - or, God forbid, to start two goddamn forwards (e.g., Dairon Asprilla?!) until you can return to the system you prefer.
If I have a revelation/opinion to offer as to why Portland’s attack can’t get going, it boils down to something very close to, what they do only really works with Mora in the starting IX. Right, one more…
Hello, Elephant!
I suspect people have seen the stat about how all three of Portland’s regular starting fullbacks have been sent off, and just six games into the season. Moreover, they all offer downsides of their own - Bonilla’s boneheaded bullshit, Claudio Bravo’s somewhat laudable, yet equally problematic aggression and…whatever the fuck is permanently wrong with Josecarlos Van Rankin. And tonight you had new kid, Justin Rasmussen, getting taken to school by LA’s well-traveled fullback Raheem Edwards to create the Galaxy’s third goal - though, again, note how Zuparic loses Chicharito despite looking right at him (and, yeah, yeah, but whatever you think of Bravo as a defender in that moment, the logic of the moment points to trusting him to manage the back-post run and stepping to Chicharito).
I appreciate that Bravo has his issues, but, among the options available, I’d still write his name in pen on the roster anytime he’s available. The situation at right back, meanwhile…what do you have but the choice between castor oil, a jug of your own piss and poison?
To pull the whole damn mess together, a team goes into the season with the team they have. Sure, there’s a transfer window at…some point (I suck at tracking these things) when a team can make some changes, but, when game-day comes around, it’s down to the coach and his staff to organize team and tactics to get the best he (or she) can out of the available roster. The one thing I can say for sure is that Giovanni Savarese has struggled to do this in 2022 - something that’s very much on him. Now, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I feel like I’m standing on firm ground with that argument. Unless you’re going to argue that he’s completely scrambled his tactics between last year and this one…I’d argue you’re bound to accept that he can turn it around.
That obliges the players to execute better as well and, to pick on a player who’s earned the right to be picked on, is it just me or has Dairon Asprilla looked a step behind pretty much everything so far this season?
Till the next one and may it be radically better…or may the Vancouver Whitecaps do Portland a solid and have another shitty game.
I’d like to begin by thanking the people involved for the few highlights. First up, Bill Tuiloma for delivering the Portland Timbers their one and literally only highlight with an elegant free-kick early in the second half. Second, let’s have a big round of applause for Madison Shanley, who (from what I gather) sang the national anthem while wearing a very red t-shirt with the equally relevant words, “YOU KNEW” in bold black across the front. Way to use the platform and keep on shining you crazy diamond.
Up next, yes, I think the Timbers had two very reasonable shouts for penalty kicks for which, as I see it, PRO Referees should have to answer for not calling - much as they did for a blown call in New York City FC's loss to Toronto FC. The first came when Yimmi Chara got cut down in the area…somewhere after the 73rd minute (I only know because, according to the chronology of my notes, it happened after Eryk Williamson came on for Sebastian Blanco), and, yes, I’d really like to hear the basis for not making that call. The other came later when…again, I apologize, but I’d lost interest at this point and I don’t recall which Timber had made the run, but the Los Angeles Galaxy’s Nick DePuy’s arm, again, very visibly made contact with and/or stopped the progress of a cross, and from an unnatural position. So, yeah, that would have been two penalty kicks to the Portland Timbers and a well-better-than-average chance of seeing an afternoon of mud-wrestling end in a draw. Keep racking up the "significant officiating errors," PRO referees! Really adding value out there. Sadly, I’ve got bigger fish to fry and duller axes to grind…deep breath…
I don’t give a shit about the blown penalty calls because the Timbers got the result they deserved. They lost 1-3 today, in Portland, against a Galaxy team that looked smarter, sharper and that executed better down to the last man; 1-5 wouldn’t have been remotely unfair. The Timbers, meanwhile, were fucking terrible, and uninspired besides - and I very much mean that down to the last man. Nothing can redeem that performance but better ones in future games and, by all the gods in all known religions, that had better fucking start with a change in the game-plan. Happily, I cataloged the myriad failings in a twitter thread, so I can focus on the damning and persistent issues that have led to what I’d like to think even the most hopeful Timbers fan can agree has been a bad start to the season.
Portland started the game pressing and I’d like to start by flagging that as something of an original sin, even if they had some moderate success with it early. The Timbers got burned by their own bag of tricks - transition goals - first by a Chicharito toe-poke at the back post, then by a Tuiloma own-goal, both delivered by LA’s Samuel Grandsir. I saw people shit all over Pablo Bonilla - and, yes, the young man had an absolute train-wreck of a night - but Dario Zuparic struggled with Chicharito’s movement through much of the first half and I feel comfortable calling that an equally proximate cause. LA’s second, on the other hand, the Tuiloma own-goal, feels like the skeleton key today’s defeat because it contained all the sins that plagued Portland’s first half - e.g., the persistent, wrongheaded (literal) labor of trying to force the ball down LA’s right, having too many players committed forward in a half-coordinated manner, the ball popping loose and getting passed to Grandsir in the vast acreage that Portland abandoned on their own right for the entirety of the first half and, yes, transition.
Bonilla picked up a soft, but typically rash red card late in the first half, of course - and that's a whole goddamn buffet's worth of food for thought - and, yes, there were those uncalled penalties, but I’d argue that any re-write of the above, largely accurate narrative risks taking entirely justified pressure off both the Timbers as a team and Giovanni Savarese as a coach. Portland’s attack, in particular, has needed four unlikely goals, two of them miracles, just to keep ahead of abysmal; three goals for strikes me as a more accurate read on the present rate of return. LA’s Mark Delgado saw red by way of a second yellow card just over 15 minutes after Bonilla’s idiotic sending off, but nothing that happened after made me feel any better about the Timbers’ collective performance today. I haven’t moved on to seeing the Timbers as a bad team, necessarily - though they will be downgraded, and on the grounds that it'll take a handful of the redeeming performances before I see them going anywhere but the middle of nowhere this season. Those are the rules, people...
I, like you, know the Timbers aren’t fully healthy, particularly in the attack, and they were at least some combination of two players short in defense today, but, had Andres Perea not rescued last weekend’s result, today’s loss would have been the third straight, and Portland played two of those games at home. The trends suck at present. So, let’s dig into why…and I’ll get to LA’s third goal below.
Playing the Cross When You Don’t Know How to Do It
There was a moment - right before Yimmi’s befouled run into the box, if I’m not mistaken - where a Timbers player situated somewhere near or about the corner of LA’s 18-yard box did the playing equivalent of shutting his brain off and punting a cross into the area. They tried this about five times in a 10-second span and it would have taken a minor miracle, one on the level of a Yimmi Chara bike, for that ball to find the right player and for that player to beat LA’s ‘keeper, Jonathan Bond, from about 12 yards out. Sadly, that pales next to the broader folly of the Timbers 2022 first-choice approach toward goal of playing the ball to the end-line and floating a cross to two or three Timbers, and with both of them making something too close to the same run - i.e., crashing toward the goal from six yards out, or less. It’s a fucking rare thing to see a Timbers attacker hold his run to offer another option toward the top of the opposition’s penalty area just to, y'know, maybe mix things up a bit. It’s ever rarer to see the attack as a whole attempt to pull the ball back and try to move around the defense laterally - as, to give a highly present example, the Galaxy did on its first goal. I have no goddamn idea how Gio, et. al., have failed to coach something as simple and obvious as varying attacking runs toward goal after all these years, but I see what I see no matter how badly I want to unsee it.
The Timbers don’t attempt that same low-percentage on every move; they actually attempt an equally low-percentage move of slipping the ball to a wide player overlapping either around the opposition fullback, or between the same and the center backs. When it comes off, it blows apart the opposition’s defensive scheme. If only it came off more often than once on the lunar calendar. And that’s why…
I Blame Society, Society Is to Blame
I’ve seen Jaroslaw Niezgoda get some shit online for his ongoing failure to find the game. I might blame him too, but I keep seeing him get the ball in positions where, to put it bluntly, he's very likely to to lose it. It amounts to setting a man up to fail as often as possible over 90+ minutes; Niezgoda simply doesn't play well with his back to goal, and I think Savarese is the only person on the planet who hasn't sorted that out yet. To put that another way: wishing Niezgoda was Felipe Mora will never make him so. As such, Doesn’t figuring out how to play with Niezgoda as the lone forward he is make more sense than that? Training a player to do things he has never done well makes one hell of a lot less sense, in my mind, than adjusting the team’s tactics to adjust to the forward you’re starting - or, God forbid, to start two goddamn forwards (e.g., Dairon Asprilla?!) until you can return to the system you prefer.
If I have a revelation/opinion to offer as to why Portland’s attack can’t get going, it boils down to something very close to, what they do only really works with Mora in the starting IX. Right, one more…
Hello, Elephant!
I suspect people have seen the stat about how all three of Portland’s regular starting fullbacks have been sent off, and just six games into the season. Moreover, they all offer downsides of their own - Bonilla’s boneheaded bullshit, Claudio Bravo’s somewhat laudable, yet equally problematic aggression and…whatever the fuck is permanently wrong with Josecarlos Van Rankin. And tonight you had new kid, Justin Rasmussen, getting taken to school by LA’s well-traveled fullback Raheem Edwards to create the Galaxy’s third goal - though, again, note how Zuparic loses Chicharito despite looking right at him (and, yeah, yeah, but whatever you think of Bravo as a defender in that moment, the logic of the moment points to trusting him to manage the back-post run and stepping to Chicharito).
I appreciate that Bravo has his issues, but, among the options available, I’d still write his name in pen on the roster anytime he’s available. The situation at right back, meanwhile…what do you have but the choice between castor oil, a jug of your own piss and poison?
To pull the whole damn mess together, a team goes into the season with the team they have. Sure, there’s a transfer window at…some point (I suck at tracking these things) when a team can make some changes, but, when game-day comes around, it’s down to the coach and his staff to organize team and tactics to get the best he (or she) can out of the available roster. The one thing I can say for sure is that Giovanni Savarese has struggled to do this in 2022 - something that’s very much on him. Now, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I feel like I’m standing on firm ground with that argument. Unless you’re going to argue that he’s completely scrambled his tactics between last year and this one…I’d argue you’re bound to accept that he can turn it around.
That obliges the players to execute better as well and, to pick on a player who’s earned the right to be picked on, is it just me or has Dairon Asprilla looked a step behind pretty much everything so far this season?
Till the next one and may it be radically better…or may the Vancouver Whitecaps do Portland a solid and have another shitty game.
It's that time of every Timbers season where I think of the Beatles' song "Getting Better" where the the cheery, determined lyrical optimism has the wry counter-chorus phrase,"It can't get no worse." Let it never be said that we carefully, methodically build Timber teams for the Supporters Shield race. All or nothing at season's end. That's how we roll, baby!
ReplyDeleteI like that; the Army ought to make that tune into a chant, complete with a call/response; it'd be pretty damn epic, and fitting. And I have a distinct, if possibly misplaced, memory of making the exact same comment about the way the Timbers try (and fail) to play crosses in either 2021, or even 2020. There's no denying the slow start is on-brand; that said, there will also come a time...
ReplyDelete