It felt like the Portland Timbers’ septem horribilis came two weeks ago, in the D.C. United and Sporting Kansas City trips that followed August 11’s upset loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps. Now, in the middle of what’s followed, this week feels much worse, even if the Timbers are hoping for better results.
The team is now in the middle of three games in seven days, stretching between a Sunday night affair and an early (by Pacific time standards) Saturday kickoff. Games against both of last year’s MLS Cup finalists are followed by a cross-country trip to play a pressing team. These are the stretches that leave players eyes rolling when the schedule comes out – the same spells players have to internalize and get over if they’re going to go about their jobs.
From the outside, though, we shouldn’t forget them. But we also shouldn’t forget how important Wednesday night’s game has become. When Toronto FC takes the field at Providence Park (7:30pm PT, ROOT SPORTS), they’ll face a Timbers team amid its first four-game losing streak since 2012; a team that is below the Western Conference’s playoff line for the first time since spring; a team that, stretching back into July, has had trouble consistently generating goals.
At Tuesday’s practice in Beaverton, Oregon, Portland’s squad was in good spirits, apparently maintaining perspective amid their season’s worst run. “We have positives to take from the negatives,” Diego Valeri said, answering, “I think we are ready,” when asked about the rest of the week’s challenges.
Those challenges continue tonight against a Toronto team that has only lost one of its last 10 games in all competitions. Here are three keys to handing the Reds a second defeat – this match’s KeyBank Scouting Report:
1. Make progress in attack (on multiple levels)
Sunday’s loss to Seattle made clear that what the Timbers’ main issue is right now. Dominate every facet of the game, but see yourself unable to endure one, aberrational own goal? The problem isn’t your defense. If you can’t outpace the randomness that can happen when you step on the soccer field, you’re fighting two foes instead of one.
Zoom out on Portland’s attacking issues, try to make the problems as general as possible, and they come down to two forms. First, the team has to do better with the chances it creates. The final numbers on Sunday’s performance read 22 shots, and three on target, but the Timbers’ best chances – like the counter-attack that tore the Sounders open near the half-hour mark – didn’t even result in a shot on goal. See those numbers on social media that say Portland’s expected goal totals were low (around 0.9, for the match)? Yeah, that’s because the connection missed between Diego Chara and Samuel Armenteroson that point-blank, first-half chance counts as a fat “0.0” in the xG books. That should have been a goal.
The other problem is attacking options. When a team like Seattle devotes a defensive midfielder each to Valeri and Sebastián Blanco, then has two central defender to track Armenteros, somebody has to step up. You have to punish teams who devote that much attention to players. Unfortunately for Portland, there is nobody else in the current rotation that has a history of producing goals. Chara and Andy Polo are being charged with exploiting those spaces, but this season, the duo has a combined zero goals in 3,069 minutes.
Then there’s the bench. Head coach Giovanni Savarese only had one attacking option on Saturday’s bench, Dairon Asprilla, explaining that, “We felt that the game was going to go the other way, and we needed more players in certain areas,” when he was asked about the choice on Tuesday. Obviously, he needed more. Will players like Jeremy Ebobisse, Foster Langsdorf or Lucas Melano dress against Toronto? Because when it comes to attacking options, the Timbers may need more.
2. What to do in central defense?
Julio Cascante has gotten a bad rap for being put in a near-impossible position on Sunday night, but such is a defender’s life, when it comes to own goals. When your name ends up on the scoresheet in that way, people are going to blame you even if that conclusion, in the face of the myriad other issues that put him in that spot, in unfairly reductive.
Regardless, Liam Ridgewell played well on Sunday. Again. In seven appearances this season, he’s only played poorly once, and among the Timbers’ most convincing defense performances of 2018, he’s often been at the heart.
And at some point, Larrys Mabiala is going to be healthy again, too. He missed his first game of the season on Sunday, but according to Savarese, he is available for selection against Toronto.
Does the Timbers staff stick with what worked on Sunday, rolling back the Cascante-Ridgewell combination? Or does the Costa Rican stay in the XI, in which case, the decision comes down to Mabiala versus Ridgewell?
3. Mindfulness, purposefulness
One of the subtly impressive aspects of Sunday’s performance was the Timbers’ ability to adjust on the fly when the Sounders switched formations. In the middle of the second half, Seattle head coach Brain Schmetzer shifted his personnel and moved from his starting 4-2-3-1 to a 5-3-2. Without changing personnel or (meaningfully) shape, the Timbers adjusted, persisted in their pressing and possessing ways and (to the extent this can be lauded when you don’t score a goal) continued to control their rivals.
Toronto could offer similar challenges. Throughout recent seasons, Greg Vanney has used both three-center back and two-center back systems, although this year, the movement between the two seems more liberal than ever. In the past, Toronto would go long stretches playing either a 4-4-2 or a 5-3-2/3-5-2, but now – with a deeper squad and more challenges, thanks to CONCACAF Champions League and the Canadian Championship – MLS’ reigning champions seem capable to playing anyway, at any time, regardless of the context of their moves.
It may be a little disingenuous to imply Toronto just developed this skill of late, as the team has been versed in its two systems for some time. But now, the comfort they have going back and forth, bringing in new people to play different roles, seems like it’s at a maximum level. The same ability to adjust to a formation switch that the Timbers showed on Sunday? It may be tested to a new degree with Toronto in town.
