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| A wretch, in one extended universe. |
In any other context, you’d pocket the Portland Timbers' 1-1 road draw at the Los Angeles Galaxy with a smile. In the context of a 2022 regular season in desperate need of a great, big goose on the bum, a little...more would have been nice.
I sat through the MLS in 15 to refresh my memory (and because I could; go on, girl, relive 1/6 of the pleasure & pain) and, apart from starting after two of the Galaxy’s early chances (22:41), they confirmed my overall impression of the game: about 90% of it happened between the defenses, a paucity of break-through moments, an afternoon of 20 gentlemen running aimlessly around a big field of green with two more standing in front of their goals, largely biding their time.
Still, Portland had their positives. Yimmi Chara made a cameo as the fastest man on the pitch with his blind-side run straight past LA’s Rayan Raveloson (who very visibly said, “fuck it,” after Yimmi bolted past), which gave Sebastian Blanco an easy diagonal for the assist. A bad touch from Yimmi could have pissed it all away, but he took an atypically soft and smart touch away from Derrick Williams (best player on field, fwiw) and slotted home near-post past Jonathan Bond. That one bright shining moment carried the Timbers to within two minutes (plus stoppage time) of bringing all three points back to Portland, and I’ll get to that, but let’s wrap up the positives.
Both Claudio Bravo and, especially, Josecarlos Van Rankin had solid games, and neither got sent off, so that’s a win. Timbers’ ‘keeper Aljaz Ivacic made a mix of good and lucky saves and generally looked comfortable back there (credit where it’s due, but I’d really like to see him yell more; I expect yelling from my ‘keepers)...and, yep, I just wrapped up the positives.
The Galaxy equalized, cruelly, almost immediately after the you-didn’t-know-you’d-miss-him-till-he’s-gone Felipe Mora made his 2022 season debut. When Dejan Joveljic gained a couple yards inside on Larrys Mabiala and finally placed a ball where Ivacic couldn’t reach and/or sit on it, LA clawed back two points they barely deserved, but anyone with eyes to see it and the stomach to stare disappointment in the face could see the Galaxy piling on those kinds of half-chance passes; neither team impressed with their xG numbers, but the little xG chart on The Mothership’s stats page matches what I remember. All it took was one Timbers defender switching off – i.e., Larrys didn’t seen Joveljic’s run till he was two yards past him – a tale as old as time. Especially for Portland.
If anything about the draw upsets me, it’s the fact that the Galaxy played only a little better than like shit. They passed the ball to Timbers almost as often as they passed to one another (a claim not backed up by the stats, btw), including a give-away to Blanco at the top of their 18 in the opening minutes clean enough to make any No. 10 proud. I didn’t realize how useless their “flying wingers,” Kevin Cabral and Samuel Grandsir have been this season till the broadcast booth confirmed that both players have contributed neither goal nor assist all season, but I saw it on the field. Among their usual contributors, even Raheem Edwards looked out of sorts till the end, and Chicharito missed a wide-open goal, if from a tight angle, and whiffed on one of those twinkle-toes backheels that he usually puts away. And that brings up the darker sub-plot.
Mabiala played like he showed up for roller derby instead of soccer yesterday. At two separate points in the game, he committed fouls in the penalty area that a more fastidious ref would have called for penalties. I don’t think any ref would have called the earlier, alleged foul against Vazquez, but Larrys got lucky with the later foul when he knocked knees with (or brushed into) Grandsir, so I’d call the risk real. Moreover, he made a sloppy, crunching tackle just outside the penalty area while carrying a yellow – and I am confident he would have picked up his first yellow for that one, but for the first. Add the Nick DePuy header called back for the shove/sales job by Dario Zuparic and the Timbers found four ways to lose this game, with Larrys finding two or three all on his own. So maybe it’s wiser to feel lucky about getting the point than I did yesterday...
If soccer has a rule of thumb (or just adherence to basic math), it’s that a defense must rise a little higher than the offense falls. And, to cast the accusing eye to the other side of the vertical axis, the Timbers’ flailing attack has arguably asked more of the defense than the other way around all season. Portland has scored two or more goals in a game just four times this season; they won two of those games – away to Vancouver, and the ritual sacrifice of SKC at home – and those account for 2/3 of their wins for the season (the early home squeaker over Austin FC was the other). They’ve scored one goal in eight games, which they stitched as a 1-3-4 into the standings (seven points from 24 on offer), and they’ve scored zero goals in four games which added just two more points to their total, feeble 16 points on the season. In other words, if you take away the aforementioned ritual sacrifice, the Timbers attack is exactly one goal better than Chicago’s.
The same damning dynamic played out yesterday. They put exactly two shots on goal – and I’m pretty sure those both came from Yimmi, i.e., the goal and the ball he nearly punched in on pure, solo hustle – and didn’t create more than two handfuls of shots in all. The attacking patterns continue to...well, suck and, worse, I’ve never seen a team struggle to create shooting lanes around the top of the 18 like the Timbers, not just throughout 2022, but off and on across several seasons. It's as if they can’t create chances if their loudly-telegraphed overlaps don’t get around the opposing fullback or if a transition opportunity that leaves the opposition's defense splayed wide open doesn’t set up just so. Because teams have figured out the former, and maybe even the latter, and absent an ability to make good on shots from range, that forces the Timbers to grind out results – something they can’t do with a factually sub-average defense (Portland have allowed 26 goals against the 20.5 goals-allowed average for the league).
So...what’s to be done with the wretch? Mora’s return should help with getting the ball closer to the opposition net in some form of control, but that feels like dropping a lot of eggs (or all of them) in one man’s basket – a man recovering from injury to boot. They’ll get that regardless if/when Mora comes all the way back, so maybe something different with how and Timbers players join the attack would help? What if, instead of getting the fullbacks into the attack and/or corners right away, they make those runs later? What if every attacking movement wasn’t premised on sending a grass-cutting cross to players crashing the six?
That’s a question of timing and it’s mostly the start of a thought than the end of one, never mind an answer. The Timbers have clearly lost the savvy to break down a packed defense and they don’t seem to have any idea as to how to shift the ball around to unpack that defense. And, if they want to end the season with more than 34 points – and, yes, that’s where the current trajectory points them – 2022 will go down as a lost season.
Portland has two home games coming up, first against the Colorado Rapids (who travel like shit), the next against the Houston Dynamo (who have been shit for years, but...). They need to make the most of those if they want to make the second half of 2022 better than the first
I sat through the MLS in 15 to refresh my memory (and because I could; go on, girl, relive 1/6 of the pleasure & pain) and, apart from starting after two of the Galaxy’s early chances (22:41), they confirmed my overall impression of the game: about 90% of it happened between the defenses, a paucity of break-through moments, an afternoon of 20 gentlemen running aimlessly around a big field of green with two more standing in front of their goals, largely biding their time.
Still, Portland had their positives. Yimmi Chara made a cameo as the fastest man on the pitch with his blind-side run straight past LA’s Rayan Raveloson (who very visibly said, “fuck it,” after Yimmi bolted past), which gave Sebastian Blanco an easy diagonal for the assist. A bad touch from Yimmi could have pissed it all away, but he took an atypically soft and smart touch away from Derrick Williams (best player on field, fwiw) and slotted home near-post past Jonathan Bond. That one bright shining moment carried the Timbers to within two minutes (plus stoppage time) of bringing all three points back to Portland, and I’ll get to that, but let’s wrap up the positives.
Both Claudio Bravo and, especially, Josecarlos Van Rankin had solid games, and neither got sent off, so that’s a win. Timbers’ ‘keeper Aljaz Ivacic made a mix of good and lucky saves and generally looked comfortable back there (credit where it’s due, but I’d really like to see him yell more; I expect yelling from my ‘keepers)...and, yep, I just wrapped up the positives.
The Galaxy equalized, cruelly, almost immediately after the you-didn’t-know-you’d-miss-him-till-he’s-gone Felipe Mora made his 2022 season debut. When Dejan Joveljic gained a couple yards inside on Larrys Mabiala and finally placed a ball where Ivacic couldn’t reach and/or sit on it, LA clawed back two points they barely deserved, but anyone with eyes to see it and the stomach to stare disappointment in the face could see the Galaxy piling on those kinds of half-chance passes; neither team impressed with their xG numbers, but the little xG chart on The Mothership’s stats page matches what I remember. All it took was one Timbers defender switching off – i.e., Larrys didn’t seen Joveljic’s run till he was two yards past him – a tale as old as time. Especially for Portland.
If anything about the draw upsets me, it’s the fact that the Galaxy played only a little better than like shit. They passed the ball to Timbers almost as often as they passed to one another (a claim not backed up by the stats, btw), including a give-away to Blanco at the top of their 18 in the opening minutes clean enough to make any No. 10 proud. I didn’t realize how useless their “flying wingers,” Kevin Cabral and Samuel Grandsir have been this season till the broadcast booth confirmed that both players have contributed neither goal nor assist all season, but I saw it on the field. Among their usual contributors, even Raheem Edwards looked out of sorts till the end, and Chicharito missed a wide-open goal, if from a tight angle, and whiffed on one of those twinkle-toes backheels that he usually puts away. And that brings up the darker sub-plot.
Mabiala played like he showed up for roller derby instead of soccer yesterday. At two separate points in the game, he committed fouls in the penalty area that a more fastidious ref would have called for penalties. I don’t think any ref would have called the earlier, alleged foul against Vazquez, but Larrys got lucky with the later foul when he knocked knees with (or brushed into) Grandsir, so I’d call the risk real. Moreover, he made a sloppy, crunching tackle just outside the penalty area while carrying a yellow – and I am confident he would have picked up his first yellow for that one, but for the first. Add the Nick DePuy header called back for the shove/sales job by Dario Zuparic and the Timbers found four ways to lose this game, with Larrys finding two or three all on his own. So maybe it’s wiser to feel lucky about getting the point than I did yesterday...
If soccer has a rule of thumb (or just adherence to basic math), it’s that a defense must rise a little higher than the offense falls. And, to cast the accusing eye to the other side of the vertical axis, the Timbers’ flailing attack has arguably asked more of the defense than the other way around all season. Portland has scored two or more goals in a game just four times this season; they won two of those games – away to Vancouver, and the ritual sacrifice of SKC at home – and those account for 2/3 of their wins for the season (the early home squeaker over Austin FC was the other). They’ve scored one goal in eight games, which they stitched as a 1-3-4 into the standings (seven points from 24 on offer), and they’ve scored zero goals in four games which added just two more points to their total, feeble 16 points on the season. In other words, if you take away the aforementioned ritual sacrifice, the Timbers attack is exactly one goal better than Chicago’s.
The same damning dynamic played out yesterday. They put exactly two shots on goal – and I’m pretty sure those both came from Yimmi, i.e., the goal and the ball he nearly punched in on pure, solo hustle – and didn’t create more than two handfuls of shots in all. The attacking patterns continue to...well, suck and, worse, I’ve never seen a team struggle to create shooting lanes around the top of the 18 like the Timbers, not just throughout 2022, but off and on across several seasons. It's as if they can’t create chances if their loudly-telegraphed overlaps don’t get around the opposing fullback or if a transition opportunity that leaves the opposition's defense splayed wide open doesn’t set up just so. Because teams have figured out the former, and maybe even the latter, and absent an ability to make good on shots from range, that forces the Timbers to grind out results – something they can’t do with a factually sub-average defense (Portland have allowed 26 goals against the 20.5 goals-allowed average for the league).
So...what’s to be done with the wretch? Mora’s return should help with getting the ball closer to the opposition net in some form of control, but that feels like dropping a lot of eggs (or all of them) in one man’s basket – a man recovering from injury to boot. They’ll get that regardless if/when Mora comes all the way back, so maybe something different with how and Timbers players join the attack would help? What if, instead of getting the fullbacks into the attack and/or corners right away, they make those runs later? What if every attacking movement wasn’t premised on sending a grass-cutting cross to players crashing the six?
That’s a question of timing and it’s mostly the start of a thought than the end of one, never mind an answer. The Timbers have clearly lost the savvy to break down a packed defense and they don’t seem to have any idea as to how to shift the ball around to unpack that defense. And, if they want to end the season with more than 34 points – and, yes, that’s where the current trajectory points them – 2022 will go down as a lost season.
Portland has two home games coming up, first against the Colorado Rapids (who travel like shit), the next against the Houston Dynamo (who have been shit for years, but...). They need to make the most of those if they want to make the second half of 2022 better than the first
Good game analysis - you saw the same match I did.
ReplyDeleteWhat's up with Van Rankin? Was this his statistical outlier performance for the season? Or has he decided that maybe his non-Timbers prospects look poor for 2023 and he better get his head right? Dairon, on the other hand, continued "in the pocket" of his 2022 mediocrity.
You don't see the Timbers creating shooting lanes; I see the midfield populated with guys with a defensive midfielder mindset who are happier dealing with the other team's forays in our direction than being creative inside a set of attack guidelines. We're an opera company totally staffed with spear carriers and missing enough divas to spark the production.
And- the total quiet from the Timbers organization continues. The Apple streaming deal was info all from MLS. Gio still makes podcast appearances with his usual upbeat generalizations. And that's... about it. I'd like to think that this isn't our slide into irrelevance within today's MLS.