On an experiential level, tonight’s 0-5 loss at Providence Park to a lately woeful Vancouver Whitecaps side had a helpless feeling to it. Suffocation feels like the best analogy, only with full awareness of how much longer it would last.
Also, losses generally roll off my back, but this duck is fucking soaked.
I like all of these players enough that I hated to see them humiliated, but I say that knowing full well that something about this team has to change.
David Ayala showed up tonight. I think a couple of the attacking players might have, but I’m not sure how one would tell given how rarely they got on the ball. Oh, except Jonathan Rodriguez, a player seemingly obsessed with getting on the ball where he could do absolutely nothing with it.
Weird, brutal fucking game.
The Timbers missed the playoffs in 2022 and 2023, but this? It was worse on every level.
Unless I somehow get caught up in the rest of the 2024 playoffs – maybe Miami cashes out early? – and feel like I have anything to say, the next post about the Timbers will be a post-mortem.
There’s nothing left to do, but accept things went wrong and figure out the best way to douse the flames and put a bow on the corpse. Till then.
As you say, Jeff - we got exposed; and the picture ain't pretty because it sure appears there's rot deep inside the Timbers that hasn't yet been cut out.
ReplyDeleteHats off to VAN - they were ready and met the moment. Oh, and last night Ryan Gauld reminded me - a lot - of Diego Valeri. He put them on his back and found every possible way to beat us...
I've been trying to think of a worse loss and I'm coming up with nothing. Takes a good outing to put that kind of hurt on a team, so, yes, hats off to Vancouver. And Gauld.
ReplyDeleteTo rephrase Marsellus Wallace: "The day after that match, you may feel a harsh sting. That's pride f***ing with you. F*** pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps."
ReplyDeleteNot sure he's correct, but I now have to resist the need to pick out pantomime villains in the club to blame for all our woes. We speculate about C-Suite thinking and motivation on the Timbers with little evidence except game results and the off-season movement of players in and out (who mostly are ciphers to us when they arrive). Timbers Reddit theories will have to stoke my rage for the next three months.
I do look forward to your eventual postmortem.
Looking forward to months upon months of multi-directional rage and over-ripe speculation.
ReplyDeleteOver at Timbers' subreddit there's a post of a chart showing 2024 MLS Salaries by Team, broken out for each by high/med/low. As PTFC is down in the bottom third, most posting centers around how more spending could/would/won't change our results.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually more interested in chewing over what could have changed this past season to alter our results WITHOUT any added spending. It seems to me we lost a good many points because of just a couple of things we didn't do at all, or until it was too late.
Thing 1: More/earlier rest for Jona would have kept the offense from a total shutdown. He's 32 and he joined PTFC after training camp AND a month of Liga MX's season. We saw his legs die the last 6-8 matches, which killed his shot, quickness AND the assists he made all season to Mora, Santi and Evander.
Thing 2: Set piece defense. Just plain incompetently organized and coached for the entire season.
Yes, our guys are shorter than average, but there's NO excuse for playing a soft, soft zone all season long in MLS, a league that by and large has very accurate set piece service.
I cannot help but think if we had changed either of those things we'd still be playing... and the most it would have cost was a different coach on defense.