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| Don't ask me how I know. |
I just posted a scouting report for the Portland Timbers’ Decision Day opponent, Houston Dynamo FC, over on reddit. To translate the notes on Houston into marching order for the Timbers, I’d go with the Timbers need to play their cleanest possible game. To tighten up the phrasing, put a fork in Portland if they allow two goals, I’d put better than even money on Houston scoring one goal, but the main thing is to expect a game tighter than a wombat’s keister. Something else to expect, at least based on what I saw over the two games noted in the scouting report: Portland moving the ball pretty well only to see it all hit an elastic, yet firm wall about 25 yards from Houston’s goal.
To distill that even further, I harbor…sincerely real hopes of a Timbers win on Saturday – not like your uncle marrying someone really cool, like Bea Arthur when she was still with us, but something actually plausible – but I am, without so much as a second thought, bracing for a draw and an evening of clocking other results almost as much as I watch the game.
So, the usual yes, no, maybe, only without the net.
With all of those options, firmly on the table, I wanted to chuck my thoughts on what each would mean for Portland’s chances. Well, except for a win. Which would solve all the problems, heal all the woes.
Hold on. Just a quick aside: I get that disconcertingly large portions of the season blew chunks on a sucked raw egg, but the Timbers climbed out of the muck here and there. Why, for just over a month over April and May, they got their heads up with a road win over expansion darlings St. Louis CITY FC and home wins over Cascadia revivals, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps, on both sides of that. I don’t remember believing at that point, but like to think I did. And what about that home win over Columbus Crew SC, the one in mid-July right before the crushing loss to Houston, aka, Gio Savarese’s last, short straw? Sure, it took the Miles Joseph Miracle (coming to you on the Hallmark Channel) to lift the Timbers into playoff contention, but even those would have fallen short – also, hold that thought – without those earlier, seemingly meaningless Ws.
To distill that even further, I harbor…sincerely real hopes of a Timbers win on Saturday – not like your uncle marrying someone really cool, like Bea Arthur when she was still with us, but something actually plausible – but I am, without so much as a second thought, bracing for a draw and an evening of clocking other results almost as much as I watch the game.
So, the usual yes, no, maybe, only without the net.
With all of those options, firmly on the table, I wanted to chuck my thoughts on what each would mean for Portland’s chances. Well, except for a win. Which would solve all the problems, heal all the woes.
Hold on. Just a quick aside: I get that disconcertingly large portions of the season blew chunks on a sucked raw egg, but the Timbers climbed out of the muck here and there. Why, for just over a month over April and May, they got their heads up with a road win over expansion darlings St. Louis CITY FC and home wins over Cascadia revivals, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps, on both sides of that. I don’t remember believing at that point, but like to think I did. And what about that home win over Columbus Crew SC, the one in mid-July right before the crushing loss to Houston, aka, Gio Savarese’s last, short straw? Sure, it took the Miles Joseph Miracle (coming to you on the Hallmark Channel) to lift the Timbers into playoff contention, but even those would have fallen short – also, hold that thought – without those earlier, seemingly meaningless Ws.
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| The company Portland keeps in terms of defense lives here. |
The point of all that drivel: the Timbers have good games in them, sometimes even on both sides of the ball. That hasn’t happened much, or at least not enough, but Portland’s defense has been pretty consistent all season, which, here, boils down to operating in the narrow space between leaky and water crashing through the walls. To acknowledge something, I’ve been forgiving to the point of indulgence about the Timbers’ defense this season. Five blowouts in one season should keep any team miles from the playoffs, but the scariest thing about Saturday is the fact that the Timbers have allowed two goals or more in 14 games over the 2023 season. Having Zac McGraw run air traffic control has been its own upside, but that doesn’t erase the brute fact that a mere three teams have allowed more goals than the Timbers in 2023. Moreover, the names of those teams should sober up the wettest drunk: the Los Angeles Galaxy, the Colorado Rapids and Toronto FC. The last two spent the second half of the season locked in a battle fetide for the wooden spoon until the bitter end, and did the Galaxy have a shit season or who?
Point to whatever specific problem or problem player you like, but the state of the Timbers defense gives them something close to a zero percent chance of ending the season by lifting silverware, aka, a 1% chance, based on what I saw somewhere on the twitters (and I still log on to twitter, not X, goddammit).
That exact thing is what makes Felipe Mora’s return to the lineup so crucial. I think everyone rates him as a player, but I still feel like people look past his actual superpower – i.e., making the players around him better. Whether by gravity/movement or just by what he does on the ball, Mora brings coherence to the final steps in the attack in a way no other Timber can; I can’t prove this, but I believe that buys more production from Dairon Asprilla, more space for Evander and so on. Bottom line, Mora strikes me as a Jedi mind-trick kind of player, a gremlin in the gears, whatever old guy pop-reference you wanna fly with, Mora creates openings for him and other players in a way that upgrades Portland’s attack, even if only to competent…if not so much against Montreal…
To wrap up the thought, the Timbers defense kept seven clean sheets this season – i.e., half their total for multi-goals against games. Based on the theory above, Mora’s the man most likely to make those clean sheets mean something better than another lonely night, if you know what I mean. Consider that my best shot at tracing the silver lining for the game or, in a nutshell, at least the Timbers have Mora; better still, they’ll have Evander and Asprilla, Dario Zuparic and McGraw for the set-pieces: the overall point, the Timbers both should and need to have one goal in them Saturday. The longer a zero sits on Portland’s side of the scoreboard, the likelier all the other Western Conference games get more of a say about which teams keep playing after Saturday. And here’s where I finally get to the point.
As I look at the rest of the Western Conference games that affect me and mine directly, I like the San Jose Earthquakes chances of beating Austin in San Jose, SKC’s odds for the same in SKC, and it gets harder and harder for me to believe FC Dallas can actually win a game. Now, assuming all those predictions hold up:
First and foremost, I believe the Timbers can afford a draw – i.e., no need to reach for the toilet paper if they don’t get all three points. A draw keeps Portland on top of Dallas, courtesy of the games won tiebreaker (right?), though SKC would jump above both on 44 points with 12 wins. And, again, if the above theory works, San Jose climbs on top of everyone else on 46 points and all that pushes Dallas under the playoff line/to their doom, and better them than us. I understand there’s an Oregonian article floating around that picks through the dazzling array of potential scenarios, but the one above strikes me as the likeliest – and that would see the Timbers come into the play-ins via the trapdoor to the backdoor, aka, a 9th place finish and a date at SKC.
All in all, call it a good margin, even if it’s not a comfortable one. At the end of a 34 game season, the Timbers have to get a good result against a tough team and one that with the ample motivation of wanting to finish in the Top 4 of the West. So, yeah, the playoffs have already started. Speaking solely for myself, I’ll consider the season salvaged if the Timbers can make it to those best-of-three series that stick out like a sore, irrational thumb in the 2023 post-season architecture. Well, so long as they don’t get annihilated on said series.
Point to whatever specific problem or problem player you like, but the state of the Timbers defense gives them something close to a zero percent chance of ending the season by lifting silverware, aka, a 1% chance, based on what I saw somewhere on the twitters (and I still log on to twitter, not X, goddammit).
That exact thing is what makes Felipe Mora’s return to the lineup so crucial. I think everyone rates him as a player, but I still feel like people look past his actual superpower – i.e., making the players around him better. Whether by gravity/movement or just by what he does on the ball, Mora brings coherence to the final steps in the attack in a way no other Timber can; I can’t prove this, but I believe that buys more production from Dairon Asprilla, more space for Evander and so on. Bottom line, Mora strikes me as a Jedi mind-trick kind of player, a gremlin in the gears, whatever old guy pop-reference you wanna fly with, Mora creates openings for him and other players in a way that upgrades Portland’s attack, even if only to competent…if not so much against Montreal…
To wrap up the thought, the Timbers defense kept seven clean sheets this season – i.e., half their total for multi-goals against games. Based on the theory above, Mora’s the man most likely to make those clean sheets mean something better than another lonely night, if you know what I mean. Consider that my best shot at tracing the silver lining for the game or, in a nutshell, at least the Timbers have Mora; better still, they’ll have Evander and Asprilla, Dario Zuparic and McGraw for the set-pieces: the overall point, the Timbers both should and need to have one goal in them Saturday. The longer a zero sits on Portland’s side of the scoreboard, the likelier all the other Western Conference games get more of a say about which teams keep playing after Saturday. And here’s where I finally get to the point.
As I look at the rest of the Western Conference games that affect me and mine directly, I like the San Jose Earthquakes chances of beating Austin in San Jose, SKC’s odds for the same in SKC, and it gets harder and harder for me to believe FC Dallas can actually win a game. Now, assuming all those predictions hold up:
First and foremost, I believe the Timbers can afford a draw – i.e., no need to reach for the toilet paper if they don’t get all three points. A draw keeps Portland on top of Dallas, courtesy of the games won tiebreaker (right?), though SKC would jump above both on 44 points with 12 wins. And, again, if the above theory works, San Jose climbs on top of everyone else on 46 points and all that pushes Dallas under the playoff line/to their doom, and better them than us. I understand there’s an Oregonian article floating around that picks through the dazzling array of potential scenarios, but the one above strikes me as the likeliest – and that would see the Timbers come into the play-ins via the trapdoor to the backdoor, aka, a 9th place finish and a date at SKC.
All in all, call it a good margin, even if it’s not a comfortable one. At the end of a 34 game season, the Timbers have to get a good result against a tough team and one that with the ample motivation of wanting to finish in the Top 4 of the West. So, yeah, the playoffs have already started. Speaking solely for myself, I’ll consider the season salvaged if the Timbers can make it to those best-of-three series that stick out like a sore, irrational thumb in the 2023 post-season architecture. Well, so long as they don’t get annihilated on said series.
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