The Late Tackle 01 23 2017: Portland Rounds Out Its Roster, Camp Cupcake Sprinkles and Snark for CCL Thing

The best Christmas ever.

Along with a lotta teams (e.g. Real Salt Lake, who grabbed a couple players*, and the Colorado Rapids), the Portland Timbers appear to be at what I’ll call “the plating stage” of their offseason – i.e., the team is nailing down what they can get, leaving nothing but sending it outta the kitchen.

(* I just want to note that Chad Barrett, the most MLS player in MLS, is one of these players. More on this later, if from another angle.)

Signing Chance Myers (plz. see poll a couple tweets down on my twitter feed), and re-signing Amobi Okugo and recalling back Dairon Asprilla feel less like sexy acquisitions (Sebastian Blanco/Dude-With-Similar-Talents/Profile, where are you?) than, say, getting a vacuum for Christmas: it’s important to have and all, you know you need it, but…well, it’s fucking vacuum.

With Myers being the only completely new (if familiar) player, that seems the most exciting. I figure the worst Portland gets out of that is Myers at starter, or an improved Alvas Powell. Okugo should provide respectable cover in some key positions, at least, but I’m still hope that he shows well enough to scare the people ahead of him in the rotation (even as I don’t see that happening, goes against history, etc.). With Asprilla, I guess it’s just hoping that he cleans up his game a little, figures out how to play better with others (is that a decent recap on Dairon? hmm…).

The thing I’m most geeked-up about when it comes to the Timbers was last night’s still-dawning realization that Portland’s left could be something next season – e.g., by way of the whole Vytas Andriuskevicius/Darlington Nagbe pairing. If that pairing comes good, Timbers fans simply must come up with a “Brangelina”-style nickname for the pairing. “Darling Vytas” is all I got right now…taking fresh suggestions…

The Armchair Analyst sorta sketched out how this functions by way of talking about how the Los Angeles Galaxy paired Robbie Rogers with Landon Donovan in his 3 questions write-up about the U.S. Men’s National Team’s January camp. It’s a buncha shit about formations – talking about the Y midfield stuff - but it works all right if you translate formation on mechanics.

Looking elsewhere….

Fewer Questions: The Portland Timbers, The State of Things

Stepdad 1. World 0. (C'mon, you'd be impressed. Or sufficiently confused.)

In a post last week, I hit a piece in The Oregonian from an angle. That article-show (you see, when an article loves a slideshow very, very much) put 11 Questions to the Portland Timbers for 2017. If Portland answers them right, they win! More often than not! (In case you're wondering, yes, accurate.)

As noted then, 11 questions feel like checking every side street instead of just driving straight to the destination. To pick an example (#2), if Portland lands on an effective center back pairing, a few other items (let’s go with, #4, #7, #11, #13, and #14), get answered either loosely (e.g. the presence or absence of “an effective center back pairing” behind David Guzman will go a long way to determining how he plays); by answering itself (e.g., if, say, Rennico Clarke seizes the starting job, the young players made an impact by definition); by the same logic (e.g., the team, and the back-line, will either have good chemistry or it won’t); directly (e.g., if the Timbers have “an effective center back pairing,” they will win more games on the road); finally, and again, directly (e.g., if they win more games, steal some others, they will make the playoffs).

Look, I’m not just shitting on The Oregonian’s copy. This is more about highlighting/addressing the big issues (personnel) and then tuning the machinery to get it firing optimal. Call it Formula 2015, or come up with something better, it’s about the same thing: getting the most out of the players the team has at any given moment. And, now that I’ve completely incorporated the Supporters’ Shield into my universe of goals, what’s possible in any given moment should influence how the team approaches each game.

To frame that from the longest distance, playing for the Shield should mean putting out your best team every time you can, because maximizing points every game means operating on a very much live for today mind-set. If, however, you’re most focused on the MLS Cup – and I think this is viable, even wise, for some teams from the start of the season, but, even more, as your options run out during the season - you can, say, risk dropping points in order to rest players (especially on the road, and in tough venues), and give your back-ups more first-team experiences, because that builds repetitions, therefore on-field partnerships. This isn’t a clean contrast, either, because FC Dallas threw their youth to the lions a couple times last season (I think; eh, maybe), but still won the Shield. At the same time, how much did wear on their team, and Mauro Diaz in particular, doom their Cup hopes? Just sayin’, people make choices alla time…

On a related note, and to see if I finally can’t get it right, I’ve been trying to understand why the Timbers winning MLS Cup in 2015 never quite satisfied me. Because the Timbers did the consistently inconsistent thing for most of the year, winning the Cup felt like your divorced dad, after an entire year of blown promises and blowing you off, absolutely fucking nailed your birthday party. That probably has something to do with 2016, but let’s stick to the task at hand.