The Portland Timbers, at My (First) Break of 2024

It's early and the outcome is uncertain.

Between being 24+ hours late and a lack of inspiration, I never got around to posting something on the Portland Timbers’ 2-3 loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps. On the whole, that loss borrowed details from the handful of games that came before – e.g., the borderline paralytic slow start called back to the loss at New York City FC and, with a nod to the home loss to the Philadelphia Union, Portland's defense found fresh, new ways to give up stupid goals. The only thing missing was the failure to put away good chances that pissed away the piteous road loss at Houston Dynamo FC.

With that in mind – and because I’m taking the next week off - of which, damn the timing, because the road game at Sporting Kansas City strikes me as the most important game of this young season – I wanted to put a pin in where things stand for the Timbers in…let’s call them the teenage years of the 2024 MLS season.

To start, I see these as the dominant questions facing the team:

1) Defensive Boners. (That’s right, I called ‘em boners.) The Timbers gave up six goals over the past two games. Each revealed a unique flaw in Portland’s defense, depending on how you held it to the cold, hard light of a slow-motion replay, but, to skip the metaphors and put it bluntly: giving up even two goals hobbles a team to limping; giving up three is the soccer equivalent of a death wish. It just has to improve. Like next weekend.

2) Will Portland’s Real Midfield Please Stand Up? Because I live and participate on the Timbers subreddit, I hereby acknowledge that plenty of Timbers fans hold a version of Portland’s midfield in their head that is both ideal and available to play. More or less. (How is Eryk, btw?) I’m taking the fact that multiple candidates exist as evidence that the question of the ideal midfield has not yet been settled. I can’t name one myself, I just know that my best current midfield has some game-wrecking teeth in it…which means, sure, I’d try to start Cristhian Paredes and David Ayala, or even keep starting Diego Chara and experiment with those two as second-half subs. The bigger issue revolves around…

2a) No, I Really Don’t. Do you start Evander or Eryk Williamson? Do you start both of them? Answer the question anyway you like, the question remains unsettled.

3) Can This Team Play a Full 90? By my count, Portland has played three strong halves of soccer this season: the first-half romp over Colorado in the opener, the from-the-depths-of-Hell-rally versus NYCFC, and…maybe you get another half by combining the snippets of glory in the home game against DC United with the hot 30-35 minutes that brought them back into the game against the Whitecaps. Still, that’s about 150 minutes of good soccer out of 550, maybe 560 minutes. The Timbers are sinking in the standings for a reason, there’s no use pretending they aren’t.

With FIRE!! HELL, YEAAHHH!!!

All of those are real problems, no question, and working all that out will take some amount of time, dear Lord, let it be short and sweet as Thy Love. (Well…maybe not so short…ahem.) That brings me to the point of this post, i.e., the question of how long the Portland Timbers have to do that. To help people walk through that, I posted a damned long set of bullet points about every team in Major League Soccer (link below), 14 of which spoke to the Western Conference Cage-Match (suspended 50 feet above A BED OF FLAMES!!!) that Portland has to play through or around (and can they do either?) to make the 2024 MLS Playoffs (sponsored by someone, surely, and someone affordable).

With that in mind, feel free to take a look at my long and winding notes (buh-buh-bum) above or just stare at the current standings (effective as of March 3, 2024, with no guarantees for future relevance or reliability) and ask yourself one simple question: how many teams in the Western Conference are incompetent/incomplete enough to buy the Timbers time to become their best possible, Guided by Phill Neville, selves they can be in 2024?

To lay down my marker - and if someone could come to my house and hold my hand as I type this, I’d be eternally grateful - the following Western Conference teams help me think Portland has some time to sort out the issues noted above, listed in the order of my confidence of their failure: Austin FC, San Jose Earthquakes, Colorado Rapids, FC Dallas, Seattle Sounders, St. Louis CITY FC, and Sporting Kansas City. Los Angeles FC probably slips into that mix somewhere, but even that lards an unnecessary detail onto one singular point:

The Timbers can make the playoffs by being better than just five of those teams. In the playoffs rolling? Maybe, maybe not. But still in. Of the teams above, and barring an actual collapse by the Timbers, I’d put money on four to finish below the Timbers in 2024 – Austin, San Jose, Colorado and Dallas. Assuming that’s right (HA!), the Timbers just need to stay ahead of just one more team to make the 2024 post-season, or, failing that, stay close enough to overtake them if/when they find their feet.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but, yeah, having this in my head does make me feel better. Till after the home game against LAFC, I’m signing off to celebrate the moon dancing with the sun.