Austin FC Scouting Report: On the Undead and Shitty Committees

Give it to me straight, doc...

It’s nice to be back, feeling like I have the space to let my mind wander. I’ll seek not to abuse the privilege. Oh, and all of this is based on memory, 75+ additional minutes of review and poking around some (real, real) basic stats.

Record/Stats: 9-13-9, 36 pts., 34 gf, 44 ga (-10); home 6-5-5 away 3-8-4, 11th West, 21st overall
Last 10: LWLLTWLLTL
Venue: AHHAHAHAAH (again, not laughing, H=home, A=away)
Remaining Games: @ POR, @ LAG, v COL

First and foremost, yes, mathematical probability is the only thing keeping Austin FC from their due terminal diagnosis. They’re dead in all but name, obviously, but spectator sports count among the rare places where zombies can harm the living. So, shoot the fuckers in the head, yeah?

The (Largely Regular) Lineup
Austin’s head coach, Josh Wolff, has trotted out at least three different formations in recent weeks – 4-3-3, 4-4-2, hell, the man even made a pass at a 4-2-3-1; then again, what else does a coach do but tinker through a 2-6-2 run? – but it’s also a lot of plugging the same dudes into a different shape (for reference, the lineups reviewed go back to the game at Nashville in late August). Guilherme Biro and Mikkel Desler have been constants at fullback, Brendan Hines-Ike has anchored most of the defenses with either Julio Cascante (hi, Julio!) or Matt Hedges at his side. Alex Ring (always) patrols midfield in front of them, with Daniel Pereira the most frequent Batman to his Robin, though (coach’s son) Owen Wolff occasionally spells him. Sebastian Driussi still steers Wolff’s (ahem) attack and mostly toward a semi-stable combination of Jader Obrian and, since he joined, Osman Bukari, but you also see Diego Rubio and, in the briefest of glimpses, Gyasi Zardes (what a signing). Driussi gets a little attacking support from Jon Gallagher, mostly through crosses (he floats wide). It’s a couple cameos from there. The end.

Austin FC Scouting Report: Looking at a Mountain, Walking Up a Hill?

Keep climbing! It gets easier! (Plus extra points!)

All the games are big for the Timbers at this point. It’s weirdly invigorating, honestly, all this living on the edge of failure...but let’s talk about the opposition, Austin FC, staring with:

The Basics
6-4-5, 23 pts., 20 gf, 18 ga (+2); home 5-1-2, away 1-3-3, 5th West, 10th overall
Last 10:    WWLWWTLWWT
Venue:      AHHAAHAHHA

My GOD, I love data! For instance, if you just had Austin’s record, you’d see that 6-2-2 over their past 10 games and have every reason to brace for a hiding. If you poked around, say, the Form Guide, you’d see that Austin only loss at home came all the way back at MLS Week 1 (versus Minnesota – and who hasn’t done that this season?), that the two draws came shortly thereafter, and that’s been nothing but Ws since.

If you look a little longer, say, walk through the teams Austin have beat at home – in order, FC Dallas, San Jose, the Galaxy, Houston, then Sporting KC – or that the 15 goals for and 10 goals against over the past 10 games tighten to just six goals for and five goals over the past five games, you'd start to wonder. They still went 2-2-1 over that five-game stretch, sturdy, sure, but the hill to climb shrinks a little every time you look at it. Next thing you know you’re seeing stats pop up in broadcast – e.g., the Head to Head going into the win over Houston that showed Austin’s xG differential at -8.6. I don’t want to oversell that narrative – not least because Portland’s checks all the boxes for being the next team to stumble into Q2 Stadium (aka, Austin’s home ground) and face-plant on the field. And that 1-5-2 road record only makes you wonder just  how hard their face will hit it.

But for that horse-fly in the ointment, this one looks wide-open. With that, let’s get back to Austin.

The Team
All-time head coach/impressive-chin possessor, Josh Wolff, does not deviate from the 4-2-3-1, and Brad Stuver always starts in goal (you’ll hear “STUUUV” every time he makes a save). Moreover, Wolff sticks with most of the same players, which include:

Portland Timbers Preview: Varieties of Desperation

Respectfully noted. For both, ideally.

Like the Old Gray Mare, the Colorado Rapids ‘hain’t what they used to be (‘hain’t what they used to be), but, fun fact, they’re still three points better than the Portland Timbers. If my animal-themed analog for that didn’t mingle horses and glue, I’d use it....wait.

Then again, let us bury the past, and deep as it'll go. To the best of our ability. And then start with some facts:

Colorado Rapids
Record/Basics: 5-6-4, 5-1-2 home, 0-5-2 road; 17 gf, 18 ga, -1
Last 10: LLTWLWLWLT (3-5-2; 0-4-1 road)
Oppo: @ FCD, @ MIN, v CLT, v POR, @ SJ, v LAFC, @ SKC, v SEA, v NSH, @ NYC

What We Know About Them
Broadly, I think of the Rapids as a team that, with a boost from discipline and a collective game-plan (nod to Robin Fraser, who strikes me as just plain good people), plays a step above their talent - or they did last season. Their record notwithstanding, they defend well (barely; see above, league average = 20.8 ga), but they can also move the ball pretty damn smartly; then again, if your attack is built like a spear, only the smith paid more attention to the shaft than the tip...I mean, is that a win? I think of them as the reigning money-ball kings of MLS, honestly. All in all, they’re just as unlikely to beat the Timbers on the road – not with that craptacular road record (wait, what? Microsoft officially recognizes, “craptacular”?), and not, with apologies to Gyasi Zardes, the floppy tip on that spear – but I wouldn’t bet large on the Timbers winning their fourth game of the season. Not unless the other side of the wager makes it interesting. And if Portland falls flat here, Lord knows what I’ll think ahead of the next one against Houston. Fuck me...

Oh, and they’ll mostly be whole. Lalas Abubakar will be out (suspended for serial naughtiness) and I’ve seen chatter about Jack Price as a possible scratch...which wouldn’t hurt. But, again, the collective is greater than whole with this bunch. Expect maybe Michael Barrios...if there’s a more underrated player in MLS history, I can’t name him.

Colorado Rapids 2-0 Portland Timbers: Kindly Stop Saying "Unbeaten in Three"

In a word, the strategy feels off...

A sum of the sum of things. As in one example of several things. I think that gets to the marrow of it.

Would it help if Timbers attackers did better with their rare chances? Of course. When the call came, neither Marvin Loria nor Santiago Moreno answered (shit…there was one more chance I’m forgetting, but…). Loria, at least, had a dynamite moment of half-consciousness proficiency at the end of the first half, and off the Portland Timbers’ best chance of the day (helluva shot, kid), but Timbers attackers mostly fired the ball over William Yarbrough’s goal like they thought that was the point of the game. To float a theory, when your team isn’t great at finishing chances, that only raises the importance of creating more of them - i.e., if you only score once in every 30 chances, getting to 30 chances as quickly as possible feels like the shortest distance to goal. This being the age of analytics, a necessary disclaimer: I don’t know the Timbers’ goal:chance ratio. I only know they don’t generate a lot of good chances (40 shots total over their last three games), and that makes every chance a little more sacred.

Speaking of creating chances, the Colorado Rapids’ xG spiked for the first time after Diego Rubio got sent off in the 63rd minute. And, sadly, that's what it looked like in real time. The Timbers, meanwhile, flat-lined for the next 10-15 minutes thereafter and generally pissed away a man-advantage for the last 30 minutes of the game. The Big Bad Wolf howling at the brick house. And that seems to be a theme for 2022.

That inspired the title, by the way. After three games unbeaten, the Timbers got beat tonight - 2-0 at the Colorado Rapids - but I can’t remember the last time Portland looked like beating any team. Playing at that level puts their ceiling at draws, most of them goal-less, and that’s not a great place to be for a variety of reasons, up to and including entertainment. Worse, they haven’t exactly played the cream of MLS during that time - i.e., at Houston, v Real Salt Lake, and, tonight, at Colorado, aka, as close to middling (and yet still higher than the Timbers) that it gets - and that adds up to 282 minutes, plus stoppage time and in reasonably playable conditions, since the Timbers have scored a goal. I never thought Colorado on the road would be easy, but the few chances Portland got seemed to surprise (and baffle) them as much as they did me and it’s been the same thing for a while now: they don’t make chances, they grasp at them. So long as a team plays like that, the defense needs to have a perfect evening, maybe even something Disney magical…and yet the 0-2 final score speaks for itself…

Sporting Kansas City 3-0 Portland Timbers: Expectations and One (Vague) Idea

I dunno. Maybe try next time.

I had no expectations, at least not good ones. The Portland Timbers played under what expectations I had in the first half before rallying to a kind of latent respectability in the second. A pillow soft goal by Sporting Kansas City's Johnny Russell late in the game undercut the "latent" part of that whole "respectability" thought: in the end, the Timbers looked like discombobulated shit losing 0-3 at Sporting Kansas.

Still, if you ask after the state of my faith, I’d tell you it’s fine. This past week had "suck" written all over it, especially after the home loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps; neither of the week's road games looked easy in context (and, for the record, here are my thoughts on the 1-4 loss to DC United) and also, the road. Given SKC’s recent uptick - e.g., they’ve now won as many straight (3!) as Portland has lost (3?) - this loss really did have the predictability of getting lung cancer from smoking. I won’t buy a doom-spiral until Portland loses another game or two and on some track similar to giving up nine(!) goals and scoring only two. The team would inevitably drop some points this season - every team in MLS does, and usually in bunches - but the good ones recover, to where they win games like DC United away, maybe draw away to a rising SKC side.

The Timbers looked like that team I could lose all faith in tonight and, bring it in for a big group hug, and right now, I will still love that team, yes, the one that struggles. At the same time, I can’t even begin to organize tonight’s errors into some kind of useful hierarchy: the mistakes came from all over the field (no, you have to earn “pitch”), and each of the breakdowns on those three goals were whimperingly pathetic. For a team that has made defense its calling card so far this season, goals like that violate the fucking brand.

And, if you want to ask what’s wrong, this feels like the quickest answer: the Timbers have lost their way defensively and have therefore lost their way. There’s not much more to take out of giving up 3.0 goals per game over their last three (why the decimal? no idea). As for what causes it, questions proliferate until you’re tangled up in chicken-egg madness. With the loss to DC, did the disconnection between the defense and the midfield cause the problems, or should the defenders cope far, far better to…call them catastrophic breakdowns in midfield? That was easier to answer tonight with the red-carpet-welcome goals SKC scored, and that’s a new, disastrous calling card, something a team has to swap out before it kills them? Even when SKC missed, they moved through and around a stunningly stagnant Portland team with depressing ease, and all over the field. A cousin of the same bug played out on the other side of the field? Timbers players: you can’t play back to goal if you keep letting your defender step in front to receive the in-let pass. (And maybe the team is still sorting shit out post-Fanendo Adi, etc. All the same, how long had it been since Adi started/played?)