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| I also want a new drug. |
I fully intend to give the Portland Timbers’ 1-1 home draw against New York City FC exactly as much as it deserves and not 20 words more. We’ll see how I do...yeah, it's the same old shit, quality variable.
First, and pursuant to today’s earlier post, no, not good enough. On the plus side, Portland caught some breaks – e.g., Real Salt Lake continuing its soft home form against (the road-ready) Minnesota United FC, and Sporting Kansas City falling as flat against Chicago Fire FC as the Timbers did last Wednesday, i.e., they coughed up three desperately needed points...and isn’t the complaint in the end?
And that goes double, given the other results that went all wrong – e.g., Austin “managed the first half of the bookend” (see "today's earlier post") by walloping Houston Dynamo FC 3-0 tonight while the Vancouver Whitecaps smeared shit all over the Los Angeles FC narrative by beating them 3-2, in Los Angeles too. To loop back to today’s earlier post one final time, yeah, I missed over half the calls (see the paragraph above, as well as this one re Austin), but literally everything in that post relies on the Timbers doing something besides forever burying themselves in the sand (or whatever the hell weird kids do in the backyard sandbox; also, use rubber gloves, always) and, the Timbers simply haven’t done enough of something in this 2023 season. And so they remain below the playoff line.
I have fewer notes on the game itself than I have random notes on things, but to wrap up the game...also, that's another lie. Damn my long wind....pah-fffftt....
First, and pursuant to today’s earlier post, no, not good enough. On the plus side, Portland caught some breaks – e.g., Real Salt Lake continuing its soft home form against (the road-ready) Minnesota United FC, and Sporting Kansas City falling as flat against Chicago Fire FC as the Timbers did last Wednesday, i.e., they coughed up three desperately needed points...and isn’t the complaint in the end?
And that goes double, given the other results that went all wrong – e.g., Austin “managed the first half of the bookend” (see "today's earlier post") by walloping Houston Dynamo FC 3-0 tonight while the Vancouver Whitecaps smeared shit all over the Los Angeles FC narrative by beating them 3-2, in Los Angeles too. To loop back to today’s earlier post one final time, yeah, I missed over half the calls (see the paragraph above, as well as this one re Austin), but literally everything in that post relies on the Timbers doing something besides forever burying themselves in the sand (or whatever the hell weird kids do in the backyard sandbox; also, use rubber gloves, always) and, the Timbers simply haven’t done enough of something in this 2023 season. And so they remain below the playoff line.
I have fewer notes on the game itself than I have random notes on things, but to wrap up the game...also, that's another lie. Damn my long wind....pah-fffftt....
First, I’d argue that Portland owed most of whatever success they had in the first half to more or less stuffing NYC’s equally flaccid attack. The sobering, dunk-your-face-in-a-sink-full-of-ice-water reality is that the Timbers struggled to create much more – i.e., I feel like the 1.0 xG posted to The Mothership’s stats page paints a fairer likeness of the Timbers’ game-long threat than the 1.76 xG that AppleTV flashed at the end of the broadcast. In literally any other season over the past (is it?) twelve, I could have looked at tonight’s shot generation – e.g., Claudio Bravo’s shot to the far post, Juan David Mosquera’s late slice over the crossbar, the great look a sharper Santiago Moreno would have put away (dammit!), orEvander’s last-gasp free-kick that pinged off the post – and transmuted that disappointment into some form of hope. In a season where the Timbers’ goals per game barely gets its nose above 1.0 goals per game, however, I can't make the stretch go so far. Again, this is a team under a playoff line pushed low enough to let freakin’ toddlers onto the Disneyland ride of their wildest, indestructible-youth, “cartoon figures never die, so how can I?” fantasies...and is there anything of any consequence after that?
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| The playoff structure makes this feasible. |
Second, what has started to feel like the inevitable, damning fuck-up happened and, so long as the scoring problems remain real, how can anything else matter? Keaton Parks could have been six inches shorter than his (reportedly) 6’ 3” (all lies!) height and still scored his header; Mosquera lost him and I’m not sure Noel Caliskan (hold that thought) ever had him. And, once NYC equalized, the game turned into a soiling, slow-motion experience of watching the Timbers fail to put away half-chances – as they’ve done for as long as the 2023 season has been a lived reality – and so they got another goddamn draw, and so they remain under the playoff line, and so on and so forth until we all start talking about next season in the middle of August.
I don’t know how to fix any of the above, but also appreciate that doesn’t even sort of matter. Giovanni Savarese & Sons are the people who need to figure that out and I, like plenty of you, am not entirely sure they have it in them. To peer into the darker thoughts, I, like plenty of you, am not entirely sure the Timbers currently have the personnel to qualify for the Western Conference playoffs, never mind to actually compete for anything that a team puts in a cabinet and that shines when polished just so (trophies, aka, silverware, aka, the point of all this running about).
The one thing I can say about tonight’s game is that Gio lined up the team more or less right – and, here, I’m assuming this version is correct, only with Franck Boli playing in front of Evander, i.e., I found the shape and general conservatism of a back four both wise and approrpriate – and, but for one moment that broke the camel’s back with the weight of a dozen small failures, that should have been enough. NYCFC hasn’t been good on the road all season, they hardly looked any better last night and, goddammit, these are the games a team has to fucking win if it wants to go anywhere besides the golf course by mid-November (right? isn’t that right around playoff time?).
It's just random notes and gently simmering frustration from there...starting with the elephant in the room.
The Awful Truth
If I was a coach game-planning against the Timbers, my message to the defense would be this simple: keep your shape and wait for them to beat themselves.
I really do think it’s that simple. Worse, nothing about the goal Portland scored whispers anything more optimistic into my ear. If you saw anything different than the same aimless shit they try every week, only with a lucky bounce thrown in, congratulations, because that looks replicable as alchemy to my eye.
Now, Good and Correct Concepts
I don’t know why Cristhian Paredes came off at the half, but I respect the reckless abandon with which he played tonight. To float a theory, I believe Savarese set both defensive midfielders on “hunt/kill” mode tonight and that was the right idea. Also...
Hold That Thought No. 1
Caliskan looked all right out there. I’m confident he was sent out under strict orders to keep it simple and he managed that brief by and large. Moreover, it’s nice to see a composed youngster out there for the Timbers.
Hold That Thought No. 2
Diego Chara was his usual outstanding self tonight, he had his share of rock-solid defensive plays and all that....that said, he also found himself in great attacking positions tonight, and on at least two occasions (I’m thinking it was three) and, pains me to say it, he was just as useless as every other Timbers attacker. Chara's a good player in transition, but I don't feel the same confidence from him or generally when he's faced with a set defense. Which gets to why you both need and can't wholly rely on...
Getting Frank About Franck
Boli had to find the ball before he could do anything all night; moreover, I don’t see that changing any time soon – and that applies to every forward on the roster. Praying to more gods than I can count on all my fingers and toes as I type this, but I haven’t seen anything that suggests that getting Mora back will change that. And now the talking points have come full circle, amen
The Timbers’ next two games come on the road, and they play them against two teams that, 1) are shockingly bad at home, and 2) score even fewer goals than they do – first Minnesota then the Colorado Rapids. Both games tee up as the kind of games where all Portland has to do is score one goal on a counter and stay compact enough to make that one goal count. And yet...
And yet...
Until the next one, and goddammit, if it can be better, can someone make it so?
I don’t know how to fix any of the above, but also appreciate that doesn’t even sort of matter. Giovanni Savarese & Sons are the people who need to figure that out and I, like plenty of you, am not entirely sure they have it in them. To peer into the darker thoughts, I, like plenty of you, am not entirely sure the Timbers currently have the personnel to qualify for the Western Conference playoffs, never mind to actually compete for anything that a team puts in a cabinet and that shines when polished just so (trophies, aka, silverware, aka, the point of all this running about).
The one thing I can say about tonight’s game is that Gio lined up the team more or less right – and, here, I’m assuming this version is correct, only with Franck Boli playing in front of Evander, i.e., I found the shape and general conservatism of a back four both wise and approrpriate – and, but for one moment that broke the camel’s back with the weight of a dozen small failures, that should have been enough. NYCFC hasn’t been good on the road all season, they hardly looked any better last night and, goddammit, these are the games a team has to fucking win if it wants to go anywhere besides the golf course by mid-November (right? isn’t that right around playoff time?).
It's just random notes and gently simmering frustration from there...starting with the elephant in the room.
The Awful Truth
If I was a coach game-planning against the Timbers, my message to the defense would be this simple: keep your shape and wait for them to beat themselves.
I really do think it’s that simple. Worse, nothing about the goal Portland scored whispers anything more optimistic into my ear. If you saw anything different than the same aimless shit they try every week, only with a lucky bounce thrown in, congratulations, because that looks replicable as alchemy to my eye.
Now, Good and Correct Concepts
I don’t know why Cristhian Paredes came off at the half, but I respect the reckless abandon with which he played tonight. To float a theory, I believe Savarese set both defensive midfielders on “hunt/kill” mode tonight and that was the right idea. Also...
Hold That Thought No. 1
Caliskan looked all right out there. I’m confident he was sent out under strict orders to keep it simple and he managed that brief by and large. Moreover, it’s nice to see a composed youngster out there for the Timbers.
Hold That Thought No. 2
Diego Chara was his usual outstanding self tonight, he had his share of rock-solid defensive plays and all that....that said, he also found himself in great attacking positions tonight, and on at least two occasions (I’m thinking it was three) and, pains me to say it, he was just as useless as every other Timbers attacker. Chara's a good player in transition, but I don't feel the same confidence from him or generally when he's faced with a set defense. Which gets to why you both need and can't wholly rely on...
Getting Frank About Franck
Boli had to find the ball before he could do anything all night; moreover, I don’t see that changing any time soon – and that applies to every forward on the roster. Praying to more gods than I can count on all my fingers and toes as I type this, but I haven’t seen anything that suggests that getting Mora back will change that. And now the talking points have come full circle, amen
The Timbers’ next two games come on the road, and they play them against two teams that, 1) are shockingly bad at home, and 2) score even fewer goals than they do – first Minnesota then the Colorado Rapids. Both games tee up as the kind of games where all Portland has to do is score one goal on a counter and stay compact enough to make that one goal count. And yet...
And yet...
Until the next one, and goddammit, if it can be better, can someone make it so?
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