Portland Timbers 2024 Preview: Hopes, Fears & Theories

In a better world...

“It’s Feb. 15 and [the Timbers] still have two open DP spots. It’s almost not even worth talking about them until they fill those spots.”

- Sam Jones, MLS Daily Kickoff

I hold this truth to be self-evident, and to the extent that this post won’t be so much a preview as a series of thoughts, opinions and speculation. Moreover, it starts in a place where I wish I didn’t.

When I saw the Portland Timbers line-up for their final preseason warm-up against Chicago Fire FC, I did not feel the glitz and glamour I’ve come to expect from events in the Coachella Valley. Instead, I saw too much of the same line-up I’ve seen over two back-to-back unsuccessful seasons. Here’s the (probable) line-up for that game (I couldn’t tell because that skeazy miser, Merritt Paulson, lacks the good goddamn sense to treat preseason like the course of appetizers they are):

4-2-3-1: James Pantemis (GK); Juan David Mosquera (RB), Zac McGraw and Kamal Miller (CBs), Eric Miller (LB); at the 2, Diego Chara paired with Eryk Williamson; at the 3, Santiago Moreno, Evander and Dairon Asprilla, and all that with a cherry on top named Felipe Mora.

Between turnover in the roster and players coming back from injury, that isn’t a name-for-name match to the line-up the Timbers trotted out, say, at the beginning of 2023. And yet, when you look at the line-up the Timbers used in MLS Week 1 2023, it amounts to splitting the difference between identical and fraternal twins. In the sense that I rate Mora higher than the departed Jaroslaw Niezgoda and Moreno over the bizarrely hesitant (and also departed) Yimmi Chara, sure, that counts as improvement. But how much?

The fact that Timbers line-up lost their final preseason game to a serially terrible Chicago team injects some vibez gloom into the launch of the 2024 regular season. I don’t know of any franchise in all of sports has put in the work to alienate its fanbase the way Chicago has. Missing the playoffs in 10 of the last 11 seasons is the tip of an iceberg that could sink 100 Titanics. I don’t put any more stock into preseason than the next fan, and I understand that one of Chicago’s goals was a freak-show error that couldn’t be replicated without a live chicken and copious amounts of despair, but, as they say, still…

The essence of Timbers fandom, 2022-2023

That said, if the question of how this team exceeds its limits over the past couple seasons, the present answers are likely upgrades in defense, new head coach Phil Neville, and…pending, as in, whoever GM Ned Grabavoy finds for the two open DP slots. Before digging deeper into the biggest picture, I want to linger on Neville and what he could mean, if in the best scenario.

On a personal level, I didn’t know how hungry I was to see anything change until the Timbers finally let go of Giovanni Savarese. For as long as Gio was in charge, you had the personnel and you had his tactics or – love the guy, but I have to say it – a decided lack thereof. That led to the recurring question of who (Gio) was holding what (the roster) back and that thing chased its tail through all of 2022 and most of 2023. Neville’s hiring didn’t wow anyone, and for good reason, but for all the angst and light expectation that surrounded it, it just feels…nice to think/believe/hope that Timbers fans will see something different on the field this season. On paper, putting a new person in charge seems like the cleanest, quickest way to shake up any team in any sport – beats the mess of blowing up a roster, if nothing else – so, I’m sitting here, fingers crossed, hoping that Neville can find some game-hacks in the roster that Gio missed. And yet there’s the starting line-up in that final preseason game and some tune I may have never heard called “Is That All There Is?” playing quietly in the background…

I’ve seen people question Neville’s pedigree and, no, I don’t have any rebuttals. I’ve also seen one very thorough person flag Inter Miami CF’s 2022 playoff run as his high-water mark as a coach (and, here, I’m acknowledging my ignorance around what he did as the coach for England’s Women’s National Team), but the best moment I saw from him came at the beginning of Miami’s 2023 season. Miami had all hands on deck and a first-choice starting defensive midfield for the first two, three games of 2023 and, from what I saw, that team looked pretty damn good. Against that, Miami’s season turned to flaming shit the second just one of those defensive midfielders went down (think it was Gregore). Put all that together and I suppose you get a coach capable of winning in the best case, but incapable of formulating a smart Plan B. We shall see, we shall see…

Another option: entertaining!

The conversation about the players started at the top of the post, but the Timbers did do some smart work this past off-season – e.g., the obvious steps of moving on from Yimmi and Niezgoda and beefing up/stabilizing the defense. There was also the less obvious and painful step of parting ways with Sebastian Blanco. That decision carried the weight of closing the book on the past, but it made very real sense for a team that needs to pivot to the future. The front office also pulled off a full remodel at the goalkeeper position, signing three with Maxime Crepeau as the headliner. I don’t know anything about James Pantemis or Trey Muse, but I have real expectations for Crepeau, if in the context of my weirdness about goalkeepers (i.e., I see the vast majority of goalkeepers as good enough with a handful of great goalkeepers and terrible ones on either side of it; we’ll see where Crepeau fits into that and hope he walks among the great).

Put everything together and the current Timbers team presents as one that should be harder to beat, but that (arguably) can only become a genuinely competitive team in 2024 if they hit on one or both DP signings and those come good right away. I don’t love those odds, if mainly in the near-term, and it turns out I’m not the only one. The editors at The Mothership threw links to the 2024 season previews for every team in MLS into one post (thanks, guys!), but I wanted to key in on one detail: the predictions by 17 of their in-house hacks about where each team will finish, first to fourteenth, in the West at the end of 2024. Before the big reveal, here’s where the average of all those predictions ended for every team in the West from best to worst:

Seattle Sounders: 1.4

Los Angeles FC: 2.3

Sporting Kansas City: 4.2

FC Dallas: 4.9

St. Louis CITY FC: 5.9

Houston Dynamo FC: 6.4

Los Angeles Galaxy: 7.4

Real Salt Lake: 7.8

Vancouver Whitecaps: 8

Colorado Rapids: 11.2

Minnesota United FC: 11.4

San Jose Earthquakes: 11.7

Austin FC: 13

Now for the Timbers – drum roll, please - their average placement was 9.4. In words, that translates to 10th place, aka, a third season only just on the wrong side of the playoff line. That may or may not be the reality, but it is anything but unrealistic – at least with the current roster and, as I see it, present tactics. There are some wild swings in those predictions – e.g., a Galaxy team that was worse than Portland in 2023 improving that much, St. Louis or even Houston not regressing, etc. (and choose your own adventure in there) – but I, like them, don’t see the Timbers as a team that has improved significantly when it comes to winning games. Things do get little weird in that Portland would have made the playoffs in 2023 had they flipped their total for losses versus draws, i.e., had they drawn 13 and lost 10, instead of the other way around – and an upgraded defense would do just that. Unfortunately, that’s a separate question from what your regular Timbers fan would like to see: the team actually competing for MLS Cup (the Supporters’ Shield ain’t happening, obviously).

Fuck it. Playoffs for everyone! Yay!!

Signing a killer DP (or two) could change that, even decisively, given the way MLS hands out playoff spots like beads at a Mardi Gras parade. If the Timbers get over the playoff line, and if the defense actually does improve, and if the new, high-end personnel can combine with the current personnel to find a reliable path to goal, Portland could arrive at that old winning formula of peaking at playoff time. The previous sentence is drunk on “ifs,” of course, and that’s a lot of waiting around in any case. If you really want to get anxious about the season, consider the depth of the hole the Timbers would need to play out of if they repeat their traditional slow start.

Because I’m against people walking away from this post with a headful of doom, I like the idea of closing with a couple plausible things that would make the Timbers better than a 10th place team with the personnel they have on hand. Neville finding the above-mentioned game-hacks tops the list, but here are a couple more:

1) A Midfield Star (Re-)Emerges

If you’ve seen Williamson at his best, you have to wonder what he could do if he stays healthy and can find his best game. I don’t believe we’ve seen David Ayala’s best, but he feels like another potential wild card in the deck. If either of those players (or, dream with me, both of them) can find a way to help the Timbers find smarter, better, faster forward momentum, it would be game-changing. Adding a dimension that isn’t working overloads and crossing would add some much needed variety to an attack that genuinely needs to find more looks at goal.

2) Free Evander. Carefully.

For all his attributes that I like, I have all kinds of questions about Portland’s bank-breaking Brazilian, including and up to worrying that he just doesn’t mesh well (even with, gods forbid, the reported new DPs). If Neville can organize the midfield in a way that allows Evander to find his best game, and without becoming the sole source of creation, I like Portland’s chances of making the current team better.

3) A (Minor) Miracle on the Wings

I’ve seen different iterations of the Timbers starting line-up in different places, but I’m going to reference the one that showed up in The Mothership’s preview for this point. That one has Antony and Moreno on either side of Evander at the 3 in the 4-2-3-1 – not, it bears noting, Asprilla. I’m okay with this because I see Dairon as a handful and therefore a great 60th minute sub…and that puts the present burden to make something happen on Antony’s shoulders. He showed flashes in the preseason game against New York City FC, but the team will need Antony to do that and more if they want to get a hoped-for strong start.

That’s it for this and, obviously, that’s plenty. We’ll see where things go from here starting Saturday*. My favorite thing about the upcoming season is the little tingle of expectation I get out of having a new head coach and rumors of incoming “we’re not fucking around” DPs. Against that, there’s my greatest fear: that the Timbers will be boring to watch. Don’t know about you, but I do this for entertainment purposes. As such, I’d rather follow a collection of valiant losers than a semi-successful team that grinds out results week after week – and the possibility that the current line-up will deliver the latter has me as worried as anything about 2024.

* I'll be watching the home opener a day late, so this'll be Sunday for me.