FC Cincinnati 1-0 New England Revolution: Notes on Transitory State

"Dude, my balls were swimming by the 10th."

Don’t expect any co-workers to excitedly ask whether you caught the big FC Cincinnati game yesterday, never mind brag about seeing live and in persona at the Big Tickle. None of that means the 1-0 win they picked up over the New England Revolution wasn’t a good thing, so much as questions about whether it means anything beyond three useful points.

About the Game
The two teams played a slippery bastard, what with the rain pouring from the skies, so you’d get slapstick like Carles Gil flopping to his ass midway through one of his defender-twisting turns. The same affliction plagued any dribbler – e.g., Luca Orellano – but the teams still managed to create a respectable haul of chances between them. Cincy had the better chances early – some of the best they’d get in the first half, in fact - but New England got a hold of the game, little by little. The loose theory/dream of midfield dominance from my Scouting Report didn’t hold up so good – the Revs’ Matt Polster probably had the best two-way game of any player, and my personal honorable mention goes to Cincy’s Tah Anunga – which saw Cincinnati’s shots come from further and further away until the halftime whistle. Peak anxiety for the hosts undoubtedly came in the stretch between a New England header off the post (didn’t see who tagged it (well), but leaning toward Mamadou Fofana?) and Ignatius Ganago’s deflected shot squicking between Roman Celentano’s fingers, but that covers the “what might have beens” more or less (Luca Langoni fired a couple from range, etc.). Cincinnati came out of the locker room with a little fire under them (angry Pat Noonan!) and they probably had their best 15 minutes of the day between the 45th and 60th minute and that best period had slipped halfway out the door when Cincy finally got the go-ahead. Shots to the back-post had been popular all day, and for both teams, but the Orange and Blue finally worked a ball into the 18 that had Kevin Denkey dancing in front of two defenders; his short outlet teed up Corey Baird, who forced a bobble out of (a solid) Aljaz Ivacic, who pushed the ball to Pavel Bucha, who squared it for Sergio Santos to tap home: it took a village, in other words, which isn’t so surprising given some absences. That left 25+ minutes of running around, plus a couple more shots – the last one noted came from a deflected shot around the 80th by Jackson Yueill – and Cincinnati came within an offside flag of marching in an insurance goal (most of these made the full highlights), but the process of putting the game to bed started with Santos’ goal.

FC Dallas 1-2 Diego Valeri: Call It a Post-and-a-Half...

OUR LORD AND SAVIOR.

The nice thing about playoff games is that they are fully and entirely present. A future of any kind exists for only one of the teams and that reduces everything to a series of moments - e.g., Diego Valeri (literally) slamming home a free-kick (and after FC Dallas players/fans had their beating hearts ripped from their chests), or Jeff Attinella smartly positioning his head to deflect a sure goal off his crossbar. C’mon, you know Jeff went low and kept his head high on that…a master class in misdirection.

And yet, I find myself wanting to talk about nothing but those little steps up the several flights of secret stairs that brought the Portland Timbers to this ripe moment of possibility, and a 2-1 win over FC Dallas in Texas. The total number of staircases falls a little short of the Winchester Mansion, but the Timbers gave old lady Winchester a run for her money…and for saner, séance-free reasons.

Portland’s game-winning goal contained a couple of the elements - e.g., David Guzman, who served the perfect pass to Jeremy Ebobisse, and Ebobisse for having the strength to shrug off the defender hanging off his shoulders (Reto Zeigler, right?), and the speed to elude a sprawling, stranded Jesse Gonzalez, to feed the assist to Valeri, who, just to note it, looks spring-flower fresh at the moment. To credit one of the other final pieces to Portland’s best-possible puzzle, Liam Ridgewell has looked like a DP defender since coming back from a variety of ailments, both physical and mental. Tonight’s win displayed the benefits of having players fill in the spaces around the guys who drive the team - Valeri, Diego Chara, and Sebastian Blanco - and, more to the point, the whole damn thing held up in spite of Blanco hitting a couple strokes over par.

I want to pause here to thank Nate Silver for my late, heightened understanding of polls, statistics, and averages. By that I mean, one team having a 4 in 5 chance of winning a game means that the other team has a 1 in 5 chance by translation (association? alchemy? fuck it, I flunked two kinds of math twice). As he explained, that 1 in 5 translates to a 20% chance that something happens, and that’s at least a half dozen steps below rare. I put up a bunch of tweets earlier today outlining why I thought the Timbers had a better than even chance to win tonight (even if I lacked the won-tons to say that outright). God’s honest truth, I’d have put Portland’s chances at 3 in 5 to win, and for all the reasons I noted - e.g., rest, having sharper attacking players than Dallas, and, more than anything else, Dallas being shit in front of goal of late, and against bad teams. Traveling stood as Portland’s biggest handicap, but they goosed the odds on that by, again, resting their best players in the final game of the regular season. And, to answer the question begged in my post on that game, the gamble paid off.

MLS Week 31 Preview: The Battle for the East

Dreamin'.....

And so the calendar rolls into MLS Week 31…more or less. As with most things, MLS refuses to measure/organize the progression of its season in keeping with real-world practices. I wanted to briefly preview – or, better, frame – this weekend’s games. Because the whole thing about a dogfight in Gresham versus a revolution in China, I’m going to start local.

The Portland Timbers host FC Dallas this Saturday and, as noted in last week’s Form Guide ULTRA, this game ranks pretty highly in my personal order of importance (here, for easier checking on the notes below, is the official Form Guide). It’s a home game, of course, – and that matters with only two left – but a win here offers real, potentially enduring positives. Beating The Cream of the Western Conference (well, this week) will puff some wind in our sails and (big stretch!), who knows? Maybe the confidence will carry Portland an extra step when it counts. More than that, though, a win here sends the Timbers into the rest of its regular season with some a little more padding. Y’know, for safety? So…what are the chances?

While Dallas is hardly on fire (4-3-3), Portland’s ass keeps bumping the ground lately. Sure, the team has been perfect at home over its last 10 games (3 wins!), but those are, 1) the only three wins over that time, and 2) those came against Toronto FC, the Colorado Rapids and (better) Columbus Crew SC. Further complicating matters, Sebastian Blanco (aka, One-Man, Two-Way Kickass Squad) is suspended for the occasion; there are no other significant, or at least not surprising, absences for either team. Having suffered a choking period of their own, Dallas isn’t exactly flying into this game, but they’re comfortably in the top half of defense teams – not great for Portland’s fitful (now Blanco-less) attack – and Dallas transition very quickly, often isolating fullbacks in particular with the kind of long balls that stretch defenses. Oh, and they’re not slouches on set-pieces either. All in all…sigh. For what it’s worth, I think Portland can get all three points…it’s just that I think a draw, goal-less or otherwise, feels more likely.

If Maximiliano Urruti who shivs us…love the guy, but…damn. Just damn. OK, on to the rest of ‘em!

After looking at the weekend’s match-ups, I decided to call Week 31 The Battle for the East. That’s no exaggeration (well, outside being an actual exaggeration), because three games have potential to move things in significant directions. [Ed. - Obviously, all this comes in the context of a league that enforces both parity and an aggressively generous playoff system - i.e., to miss the playoffs is to fuck up enough to disappoint your dad, and have two of his friends mock him. Your mom will always be there for you, pumpkin.] To take them in no particular turn:

MLS Week 7 Review: The Good, The Bad, The Tough

MLS. Only with fewer restraining variables.

First, the data dump.

Philadelphia Union 0-2 New York City FC

Vancouver Whitecaps 2-1 Seattle Sounders

San Jose Earthquakes 1-1 FC Dallas

Montreal Impact 2-1 Atlanta United FC

Orlando City SC 2-1 Los Angeles Galaxy

Chicago Fire 3-0 New England Revolution

New York Red Bulls 2-0 DC United

Columbus Crew SC 2-1 Toronto FC

Houston Dynamo 2-2 Minnesota United FC

Colorado Rapids 1-2 Real Salt Lake

Portland Timbers 0-1 Sporting Kansas City

Those are all the games played and entered into the official record in Major League Soccer’s Week 6.5 (look, I know it’s annoying, but the calendar self-corrects, I think, Week 12). The question is what to make of them. To take a wild stab at that…

Tangoing Narratives

The low-hanging stories noted the weekend full of comebacks and late (sometimes late, late) goals. It’s not so much that both of those things aren’t some combination of fun and important, but San Jose has to squint tight to see inspiration in its late equalizer and David Villa’s amounts to a genius fuck-around and little more, but teams like Montreal, Orlando and Real Salt Lake came by the little spring in their steps honestly. I have solid arguments for all the above (San Jose needed every one of those 90 minutes for that one goal, Philadelphia is depressingly terrible [sad emoji], any win over the heretofore nettlesome Atlanta earns a little bump (especially when well corralled; red card helped), LA has the rep, even as they’re riding it beyond its legs, and any sign RSL can win sans snow is a good thing, respectively), but, all the usual caveats apply: we’re only 6 games into the season (for most teams…hold on…still wrapping my head around how…5 teams have played 7 games…MMMaatttthhhh……….), and, as always, MLS is a random-number generator in league form – and ain’t it a downer that I can’t get some crack about 20-sided dice in here? (22 teams…who does your branding, MLS?)

Timbers Draw Vancouver: Expectations Managed

Dear World: You're welcome.

Before getting into the meat of this thing, I want to state that I will post some thoughts on the first legs of the other three MLS Conference semifinals. It's only the mini-games for Montreal Impact v. Columbus Crew and Seattle Sounders v. FC Dallas. I sat all the way through DC United v. New York Red Bulls...of which I could say I have no regrets, but...

While we're on the mini-games, something struck me as I reviewed the (limited) tape for the Portland Timbers goal-less draw against the Vancouver Whitecaps. They're funny things, the mini-games, in that they inflate the competence and calamity of any given game. Don't know why that never hit me till today, but, yeah, that's a pretty distorted lens in the end. Have no goddamn clue how I'll adjust to that next season.

Wait, they're also the opportunity to pick up on little things one might have missed – e.g. because I watched the game with muffled sound, I didn't know that Taylor Twellman and Adrian Heath spotted a naked tricyclist in Portland last night. Ah, shine on Rose City, you crazy diamonds. I also missed how Madden-esque Twellman has become (e.g. obsessed with his own sometimes trivial fixations at time; see, potential concussions and theories on the state and presence of Steven Beitashour's wedding ring). There's a certain charm to it, really, Anyway, the game. The game, the game...

At least three people today told me that they were satisfied with the result, again the goal-less draw that, let's face it, anyone reading this post watched earlier today. Once one takes in all the factors – injuries/ailments to Diego "Mystery Ailment" Chara and Adam "Flu" Kwarasey, respectively, as well as a sometimes visible lack of rest (for some more than others) - that's a damned hard position to argue against. And I don't intend to argue against that, so much as to drag the result back to a kind of cold, neutral perspective. Because, to be clear, today's draw would pop little beads of sweat into Timbers fans' brows, and rightly so, under virtually any other set of circumstances. And so begins today's tale of acceptance...

Timbers Top KC: On the Most Epic Night in Portland Soccer History

We're all Patty Hearst now.

[Editor’s Note: The bastards at MLS Live have yet to release the full game to the archives and I don’t have cable. As such, the deeply detailed conclusion to this report, which I promised yesterday, yeah, that ain’t happenin’. Time’s too short.]

[A Note from Randall: I went through and chopped out some of the kudzu from the original post while Jeff’s back was turned. The man loves his words and analogies irrationally and too well.]

Between getting home late [Thursday] night, drinking all the water in the entire goddamn neighborhood, trying and failing to relax using a (literally) numbing variety of sleep aids, and waking [Friday] morning with a pack of wild dogs tearing at the wrinkled matter between my ears [we’re talking about one of those existential hangovers of the soul] […cut more stuff…], I had [to put off posting] anything about the Stockholm Syndrome spectacle that the Portland Timbers put its fans through last night until [today].

Having reviewed the [severely, unjustly limited] tape, I’m going to put [my best foot forward, the one without athlete’s foot] to [make some sense of that rare, magnificent thing, the genuine historic game]…

…and I’m still coming to grips with how I’m not going to die in a bar Sunday afternoon from watching all those games. So, check your local news for that one ("Man Dies in a Hillsboro, Oregon Bar: Could This Story Be More Depressing?") We're talking David Blaine-level feats of street magic idiocy.

[Editor’s Note: Caught Randall, the little shit; locked him in cellar with a two pound bag of carrots and a case of Snapple. Everything’s below is different. Moving on.]

I’ll begin by saying that I learned a thing or two last night. For one, I learned that men over 40 should not yell for two straight hours. The medical term for this is “stroke risk.” Whatever, I earned it: the goddamn terrible ref (Armando Villarreal), whose series of coin-flippingly perverse decisions put health and safety at risk, let the physical crap get out of hand, and then came a penalty kick shoot-out that…that…look, the thing existed in a world beyond sensation, in spite of itself. The level and frequency of wobbly penalty shooting was enough to make a member of the English National Team blush; a less invested audience would have shifted out of tension and into impatience. And yet, could anyone at Providence Park have been anything short of all-in?

I want to pick up the Stockholm Syndrome theme because I think it’s endemic to sports fandom. The defining rule of one team per trophy means that, with each of Major League Soccer’s competitions, major (MLS Cup, the long lusted-after CCL trophy) and minor (U.S. Open Cup, Supporters’ Shield), means that 19 teams miss out every single time. For those 19 teams, a given fan’s peace of mind, his/her sense of the season, turns on how early into the journey his/her club falls. 12 of MLS’s 20 clubs are now officially out of the running for MLS Cup; only one of those, e.g. the same Sporking…ooh, typo, but I like and am sticking with it. Anyway, of all the clubs out of the running for MLS Cup, only the same Sporking KC club has a consolation/prize trophy to validate their season.

Stripped of variables like the quality of the players, a good coach at the helm, various curses (looking at you, Toronto FC) every team in MLS has a 5% chance of winning one of the three domestic trophies. Even with the variables in play, the sheer mass of vagaries built into MLS as a competition, argue in favor of sticking with that 5%. Basically, disappointment is the likeliest conclusion to any season for virtually every soccer fan in the country. And yet a fan is bound to his/her club. He or she pushed past expectations of disappointment, or even abuse for fans in Chicago, Colorado and Philadelphia, and just invests in the club. In that sense, then, fans are captives, sometimes abused ones, and yet they always love their captors.

The team rewards its fans on a good day: think of Thursday as the sort of day when our collective captors give us a little more chain and drop some fresh fruit into the will-sapping gruel they normally serve. Regardless, the Portland Timbers did us all a solid when they lugged their proverbial “big, brass balls” longer and further than they had to, or arguably should have. We all just witnessed history, which is a privilege anytime it actually happens. I know I’m thrilled I was there for it. Super fucking glad, honestly. It was an honor to share the evening with each and every person in that stadium, as well as the unknown thousands watching at home.

After putting up such ornate framing, it’s time to turn to the game, what happened in it and what it might mean going forward. Anyone who read this post’s first iteration knows that I cut and pasted the thing into something other than what it was (and something better, hopefully). One crucial confession, however, needs to stay in place: which I’ll preserve in the block quote below:

“Talking about what needs fixing is sort of this site’s Prime Directive. The urgency of a do-or-die game runs said Prime Directive right the fuck over: all I could see [Thursday night] was the ball and where it was or wasn’t going. I was too busy pleading with Timbers players and all the gods whose names my mouth could still form to get the ball in the correct fucking goal (this was a short list in the end, outside of gods named “Oowwauggghhh, FUCK!!!”). This lead to some weird things.

“First of all, I can only remember the goals that came in extra time: Krisztian Nemeth’s, the one that put KC up a goal late and forced my heart into my throat, and Maximiliano Urruti’s; but I only recall the latter as a bulge in the net. I only know who scored the other two (Rodney Wallace, for Portland, and Kevin Ellis for KC) from reading a couple write-ups today.”

I left in a couple hasty first impressions as well, but I’m only keeping the three I liked. Here are those:

- I want to nestle inside Nat Borchers’ beard for as long as this season continues. It bet it feels safe in there. (Just saying it again, Borchers has been excellent this season; second only to Diego Chara for me in terms of importance.)

- Things got steeply fucking worse when George Fochive came on. Last Word on Sports slipped a graph into its review (supplied by the Armchair Analyst) that pointed to a decision on Portland’s part to bunker and try to ride out the win. Whether or not that was true*, Fochive stood out time and again by playing the ball behind and generally away from teammates. By the time he stepped up to take his PK, I had zero faith that he’d put it away.

- * Oh yeah, Liam Ridgewell lumped a ball straight up the middle during this period, and..I think that’s when my voice gave out. And the little vessels in my brain went, “pop!”

OK, onto the new stuff.

As I read match recaps of game, the one idea that I kept coming across was Portland’s “domination” of the first half. This is precisely why I’m cranky about not being able to review all, or most of the full, archived game, because the 20-minute mini-game simply can’t capture this. Not being able to directly verify that – and I need to verify due to the gaps in memory and perception noted above – leaves me stumbling through this post like some stoned, half-prepared teenager trying to mumble his way to a solid C on an oral presentation. Again, fucking MLS Live. To carry on, dutifully…

Up to the point when Wallace scored Portland’s opener, that condensed game showed an early feast of corners for the Timbers, a couple cracks in the KC defense that Sporking quickly patched up (Matt Besler got a pretty big shout-out in ExtraTime Radio’s review), and a couple fouls by KC that most people (ETR’s neutral professionals included) agree could have been red cards (again, my frothing frustration with Villarreal is both fresh and totally justified). The box score gives Portland a meaningful edge in shots overall and…and…hold on, just digging into the interactivity of the box score feature. Holy shit. Anyone else know about this? Feel like I’m in one of your higher end science museum for kids. What’s this button do….ooohh…..

Anyway, the numbers that best match my memory of the game show up in Portland’s possession and passing accuracy stats. The accumulation of give-aways proved maddening by game’s end; as noted above, Fochive was terrible on this score, but he had plenty of co-conspirators by the end of the second half. Possession with Purpose forwarded a decently plausible theory that the shift brought on when Fochive came on for Lucas Melano cratered Portland’s possession by ceding too much of both the field and the ball to Sporking KC. Again, I thought I saw this earlier, again, I confessed to not remembering the goals, which are sorta a big deal, so take a big lick of salt before swallowing this here shot of tequila.

All in all, though, as much as the Timbers struck me as sloppy and impatient in possession (and I accept it got worse as the game wore on), the central feat of their performance comes with going to toe-to-toe against a Sporking team that often relies on “setting the tone” – or, non-euphemistically, they foul often, hard and with less shame than they ought. Maintaining that level against the Vancouver Whitecaps team that comes to visit tomorrow – i.e. well-rested and with a “robust” presence of their own in central midfield and defense – becomes a very real challenge, if not an area of concern. I expect Vancouver will let them play more than KC did, but cracking that strong, central core won’t come without some hammering. So, god damn the short turn-around.

Since I can’t dig deep on the game (grrr…), I thought I’d close with thoughts on the three Timbers players who received too little praise for the win, at least in my estimation. In no particular order…

Rodney Wallace

Fortunately, the mini-game featured enough data points to highlight Wallace’s considerable contribution to the win. He did more than score the scrappy, opening, coulda-been-a-winna goal (which he finished ever so well), e.g., how often he stretched KC vertically, he hard he battled on set-pieces, etc. etc. etc. It does even deeper, though. When I took a tour through the Conifers & Citrus archives for a sort of big-concept post a couple weeks back, I noted how often I gave positive notice to Wallace; a recount taken just now pulled six examples of uncomplicated praise for Rodney, and across the length of the season (there were also three instances where I advocated for throwing Wallace on the trash heap; still, twice as many good as bad!). The point is, Wallace enjoyed a solid 2015 and, for me, too few people gave his season the credit it has earned. A lot of the talk has centered on Melano since he came on board – and,  yes, that comes in both good word and bad – but Wallace does a very respectable job of opening up space for Portland. His decisions aren’t always perfect – Rodney flails in crosses and lost-cause shots with the best of ‘em – but he’s also a helluva an asset and an even better bargain.

Dairon Asprilla

Very few people I talk to rate Asprilla as highly (irrationally?) as I do; I even snuck in a compare/contrast with Melano in a modest little hit-piece on our young, costly Argie about a month ago. I’d also that Asprilla lent support to my estimation of him with that performance in extra time, and even during the shoot-out. Yeah, yeah, the assist is the obvious thing, but the mini-game also featured a strong dribble/distribution sequence that did Darlington Nagbe proud (think he was even the recipient). Asprilla didn’t get much opportunity to contribute this year, never mind shine. I view that as a mistake, even as I’m as hard-pressed as anyone to come up with how Caleb Porter, et al. fits him in. My two-word answer to that: squad rotation. Along with every club in MLS, the Timbers need more of it.

Maximiliano Urruti

Urruti did very well to knock in the goal that saved Portland’s season, because, hot fucking potato. Seriously, if you’ve ever tried to re-direct a ball moving that fast I’m confident it didn’t look nearly as good as Urruti’s did. It goes without saying that it hasn’t been Maxi’s year. It’s also fair to argue that, like Asprilla, he didn’t get much of a chance either. To be clear, Fanendo Adi earned his role as First Forward (thinking First Violin for some reason), but, 2) again, squad rotation, and 1) I think Urruti’s approach to the game syncs up fairly well with how I believe Portland attacks best…

…think I’ll leave it there, otherwise, I’ll go on for another two pages. I know there’s a reckoning coming with players like Asprilla and Urruti; there are others besides, but I think Wallace is safe (better be safe, dammit). I just think this is something that the Timbers organization needs to work through very carefully, and the above players’ contribution to an historic win shows why.

As for the Vancouver series, it sucks a little to acknowledge how damn unfavorably it lines up. Portland starts with a home game on heavy legs, followed by a road game. There is a key detail in the equation – namely, that both Portland and Vancouver travel well, 7-8-2versus 7-7-3, respectively. And that strikes a curious balance in that it alludes to the possibility that Vancouver could trouble a tired Portland club at home, while also staying open for return service in the second game at BC Place.

It’ll be very interesting to see how Portland plays that first leg. Wide-open sounds very dangerous on paper. I’ll close on that. Damn. If nothing else, 2015 ended really well.

The Timbers: How They Score (When They Score)

Again! And do it exactly right this time!!

If you sit down to watch all 25 goals scored by the Portland Timbers in this Year of Our Lord, 2015, and let memory take thought for a little tango, you come to appreciate a few things. Among them:

- It never really got better than that home win over Seattle. The Timbers scored Number 18 in that one and, ah, she was something, that goal.

- Timbers have treated their fans to a few short, sweet mini-narratives this season. Or, per your preference, false dawns: those two, three weeks when Jorge Villafana made it possible to believe the club had pulled a secret dead-ball specialist out of its ass; the two-game partnership between Gaston Fernandez and Maximiliano Urruti that turned out to Gata’s swan-song. The team snuck in a couple surprise highs – see, Jack Jewsbury's late-game-hero cameos (speaking of swan-songs...it's comin,’ Jack) – but the great, fitful constant for the season comes with those wonderful occasions when Darlington Nagbe tore straight through the fucking sternum of a couple defenses, punching right GODDAMN THROUGH TO THE BEATING, BLEEDING HEART...OH MY GOD?! WHY AM I YELLING?! GOAL! GOAL!!!

- Those are cherished moments, those times when Nagbe all but freakin' teleported into that gap 25-30 yards from goal with defenders scrambling before him like panicked villagers with barbarians snapping at their heels. Feels like it's been awhile. Guess that's it. Thought maybe if I yelled loud enough they'd come back. Anyway, it's easy to forget sometimes just how much Nagbe was all over Portland's first seven goals of the season, late(-ish) as they came.

- Finally, who can forget the weird, hopeful waiting for Diego Valeri to come back.

- The feeling hasn't gone away.

- Has it?

The Elusive 15+ Goal Season: Why the Portland Timbers Are All Right

It'll totally make sense by the end...but only then.

If you asked me cold the number of goals a Major League Soccer forward needs to score in order to rate as "quality," I'd say 15 in a season. I've even thought of 20 goals as a reasonable haul for a real quality forward. True story...

Who knew I was the angry, disappointed father type (that I always feared I would be), because that figure doesn't hold up. First of all, a goal every other game is a great strike-rate in any league in the world; that's 17 goals a season in MLS. It's even further off in the context of MLS as a league. 15+ goal seasons are rare in America's top flight. How rare? Since 2010 (according to a...loosely statistical analysis (inviting peer review, people), an MLS forward has scored 15 or more goals in a single season just 21 times. And two players – the Los Angeles Galaxy's Robbie Keane and, of course, the San Jose Earthquake's Chris Wondolowski – account for a combined total of six of those twenty-one 15+ goal seasons. As for those 15 other occasions, call them wonderful exceptions to a rather stingy rule.

How many 20+ goal seasons have there been since 2010? Just five. And those are as follows (alphabetically by team, accidentally, because that’s how the data lays out):

Marco Di Vaio, Montreal Impact, 2013 (20 goals)
Bradley Wright-Phillips, New York Red Bulls, 2014 (27 goals)
Chris Wondolowski, San Jose Earthquakes, 2012 (27 goals)
Dom Dwyer, Sporting Kansas City, 2014 (22 goals)
Camilo Sanvezzo, Vancouver Whitecaps, 2013 (22 goals)

For the curious, I listed all the 15+ goal seasons below, by player, and after everything else. But, for the general purposes of this post, I counted a total of 72 times when an MLS forward(-ish*) scored more than 10 goals in a single season. According to my stroll through the stats page every friggin' club in MLS (DC United's excepted, because it's a frickin' mess; and here's a sample of where I'm looking), since 2010, the raw percentage that any forward will score 10 goals or more in a season boils down to about 30% (29.6% by a precise count; 72 out of 243 "statistical events").

And, by implication, those same 21 15+ goal players came out of that same pool, which translates a whopping 8.6%. More qualifiers: I say *forward-ish because the word "forward" doesn't always cleanly define. For instance, I included players like Landon Donovan and Chris Pontius in the head-count; neither player is a forward, strictly speaking, but both are "forward enough." This will bite me on the ass as soon as the next paragraph...

A History of Portland Timbers' Forwards, MLS Era

Open minded. Just want goals....

I coveteth a forward from another Major League Soccer club: Sporting Kansas City's Krisztian Nemeth. It started innocently enough, back in the pre-season, when he lit up a club or two in one of the ever-proliferating preseason tournaments. (sorry, no links; KC runs one of MLS’s limited website templates.) Coveting ripened to lust (bosom now heaving) when he put his foot up Chris Hedges' ass in KC's recent rout over FC Dallas (just, FYI, I'm down with master/slave stuff) and so his reputation grew, at least in my eyes. I dream of him winning the Golden Boot, MLS MVP, and possibly MLS Defender of the Year the way a pre-teen girl imagines Zayn Malik strolling into her bedroom. I mean, look at that sick little spin against Hedges (start watching at about 1:30 here). Totes dreamy!

Let's pause there, because I looked up Nemeth's numbers yesterday. They're solid, certainly, and they don’t capture the full scope of Nemeth’s contribution (he passes well, combines a little better, and, to borrow an Armchair Analyst favorite, he's developing reasonable gravity). That said, his level, at least in terms of raw numbers, should translate pretty readily for Portland Timbers fans: Nemeth is exactly one assist better than the oft-slagged Fanendo Adi. Both players have 6 goals; Nemeth just has two assists to Adi's one.

I lead this post on the Portland Timbers'....troubled? Allegedly troubled? Imperfect? A couple steps on the wrong side of paradise? At any rate, I entered into this exploration of the Timbers' history of signing forwards on the premise that none of them really panned out for Portland. But I lead with that note on Nemeth to acknowledge that perception, greed (for goals), and envy play some role in all this. (Also, just real quick: I had hoped to include some data from the USL/A-League days, but those are buried deeper in the internet than I'm willing to dig, at least while I’m on a self-imposed deadline. The only forward from those days who I remember by name is Fadi Afash. He was impressive, too, scoring 27 goals in 53 games for the USL Timbers...he, uh, also embezzled $138,000 from an elderly couple, which puts him squarely in the Timbers All-Time XI for non-violent criminals; um, back to regularly scheduled programming).

Timbers Top New England: The Wonderful Efficiency of the Counter-Revolution

Yes, that is absolutely as fun as it looks.

A couple things escaped my attention while watching the Portland Timbers' late (late) 2-0 win over the New England Revolution. Holy yellow cards, for one. That ref really seemed to get a kick of pulling stuff out of his pocket.

One thing that couldn't be missed, however, was how well Portland pinned New England into the wrong end of a shooting gallery. I can't check the box scores yet (still games to watch; still results to parse), but I'd be shocked if Portland managed more shots on goal in any game this season as they put up against the Revs. The reputations of the club reversed a little, in fact, with the Timbers playing the short, quick, slick stuff on which New England built their little near-empire over the past couple seasons.

There's not much to say about New England, really, who got something close to over-run last night. The worst thing one could say is that they lost all of Adi on Portland's opening goal. They had a couple chances, of course, and Adam Kwarasey bobbled a couple of them (but on a night, and in the context of looking better every game), but the Timbers crashed into them one wave after the other. Something about harnessing the Power of the Pacific. Which, as everyone knows, is the superior ocean.

And there it is: Portland's first three-game winning streak in their short life in Major League Soccer. It's a bit of a shame, really, that the Timbers have next week(end) off, because thar be wind in the sails and a fair wind it is (Arrr, me mateys!) And there's a little irony in this because before this streak started, most Timbers fans would have killed for this week off with any eye to buying time to get Diego Valeri back on field. And that’s a good place to start into the talking points.

Timbers Top DC United - I Even Caught Parts of It

The only thing missing is a beer.

Sending me to watch a soccer game live is like dropping an infant into a room full of mirrors, crinkly stuffed animals and buttons that make noises when pushed. I get very, very distracted. By everything (I haven’t quietly "made" at a live game; so far so good). When I'm not staring at everything but the game, I'm talking to the person I came with. Damn close to non-stop, too. Because I like my friends.

So, anyone looking for in-depth, closely observed match analysis probably ought to check elsewhere (the stuff in there on Gaston Fernandez is interesting in a "hey-a-friend-of-a-friend-who-you-will-never-meet-did-this-interesting-thing" kind of way). Happily, the couple articles and the box score I checked this morning matched my fuzzy impressions of the game (which degraded to downright wooly by the 85th minute), down even to wondering if everyone played that little bit better because they’re all afraid that Will Johnson will holler at them...

Yet I think that’s the key: the Portland Timbers, as a whole, just played a better game last night. And, shit, buried the lead again, the Timbers beat a thrown-together DC United side 1-0. They didn't appear to do anything drastically different, either. Dairon Asprilla had a beast of a run, bulling and stumbling through and over three DC players (that one got the crowd all whooped-up) and he looked great on both sides of the ball, and I guess that’s a good short-hand for what went right out there. The Timbers, as a whole, shelved the occasional hesitant listlessness that has weighed so heavily on the season and instead played with good, solid aggression. Basically, they chose not to suck. Perhaps out of fear of Will Johnson.

And...that's where the analysis dries up. After that, I agree with some general observations made in other people's analyses/articles – e.g. I’d rather see Maximiliano Urruti out there than Fanendo Adi, uh, let’s not carried away with one win, um, this wasn’t DC’s best, first team, etc. Oh, to part ways a little with one comment, I would like to see Asprilla start over Rodney Wallace. No shade on Wallace, really, but I think Asprilla has a couple more tricks in his bag. And we need tricks, people.

Portland Timbers Review/Preview, Week 4/Week 5: Little Things, When Big Things Are Needed

Portland needs this guy. He's pinning stuff down blind.

Caught in a crazy, busy week here at Conifers & Citrus, I don't have the time to do the usual Tour d'Agony through all that Portland Timbers-related commentary and speculation. Then again, is it really necessary? I mean, we all know happened, right, in that distasteful loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps? A mighty comeback, even a near-win via Fanendo Adi's second crack at damn, dirty David Ousted (there's yer twitter handle, son; I suggest you take it), undone when That Goddamn Pass met a Keystone Kops Kaper from Nat "Natty Bo" Borchers and Liam [Nickname Pending] Ridgewell ("Ridgey" is wholly inadequate). It's a sad song, but at least we all know the tune.

Even with Matthew "The Armchair Analyst" Doyle threatening to provide numbers that demonstrate that Darlington Nagbe roared like a lion through March (on Twitter; and then Doyle provided; well worth the read), I'm done looking back...Oh, all right!

I'll keep my over-arching point short and sweet. Sure, the second defensive collapse of the season is a big, glum cloud, but a silver lining surrounds it: the Timbers played decently last week, and are playing decently enough, despite the absence of two key players (arguably more once one throws in Ben Zemanski, who can help kill games, and Jack Jewsbury, who (I don't care what anyone else says), provides a range of passing in deep midfield that helps the team overall). Portland has been in every game, complete with good-to-great spells. It's just pinning down the result that causes the headaches and absence of points.

This week's brief Tour d'Agony supported that point and it didn't. Stumptown Footy's Chris Rifer put together what was, in all honesty, a compact, yet nutritious review of the season so far in service of arguing that coaching isn't the problem. And, yep. Chris Gluck compiled a bunch of stats for the same site, which revealed where the Timbers came short. Or didn't. That's the funny thing with numbers, when it comes to soccer: too many damn variables – e.g. possession against this team isn't possession against that team. Gluck notes the averages, though, which I'm sure communicates something. Uh...moving on to the familiar ground of naked speculation.

Portland Timbers at Mid-Week: Looking Back (at RSL), Looking Forward (at LA)

No, no, no! It'll be too late by St. Patrick's!

The question that has preoccupied me since, oh, last weekend – not coincidentally, when I learned of it – was the history of barren March...shit, what's the plural of March, the month? Marches? Anyway, it seems that Portland Timbers head coach Caleb Porter has never won a game in March. So said Stumptown Footy in its 3 Questions post after last weekend's draw to Real Salt Lake. Call it one of those fluky stats that is defining in some mysterious way. The Timbers haven't won in March since entering MLS. Damn.

A couple notes on that. First, picking up a win in March won't come easy in 2015. Portland has the Los Angeles Galaxy this Sunday. After that, it's back-to-back away games against Sporting Kansas City (shit!) and the Vancouver Whitecaps (shit. punctuation matters here). Second, the reviews are in on Portland's draw against RSL and they read favorably...at least when judging the quality of the contest. "Playoff intensity" says World Soccer Talk (well, roughly). There were more raves, but I won't link to them. Expecting people to sit through all those damn podcasts is a big ask, but, scout's honor, plenty of pods talked up the on-field quality of Portland v. RSL.

Sadly, that doesn't translate directly on-field quality for the Timbers: power rankings from MLSsoccer.com, in particular, put the Timbers at the barest edge of the playoff picture, but a couple other rankings recognized the recurring role of one Nicholas Rimando in thwarting Portland from, to borrow a phrase, being all they can be. MLS's site put it best with their one-word summary: "Rimando'd."