Portland’s week in the wake of Saturday’s loss to Minnesota United FC has felt like the moments after a workout, when your first time off the treadmill is consumed by refilling your lungs. You’re weak, uncertain in your movements, just trying to get back to feeling like you. Your body is taking inventory of itself knowing that now, with that stress over, it can get back to its normal course.
Now, the Timbers get to resume their normal course. No mid-week games. No overbearing travel commitments. No fast turnarounds to prepare for coming games and, perhaps most importantly, no excuses. For the next five weeks, with games on the weekends (and only the weekends), the team will have time to focus.
The first object of that focus arrives at Providence Park on Saturday, with Western Conference-leading FC Dallas coming off a 2-1 victory at Vancouver Whitecaps FC. At kickoff, Oscar Pareja’s team will have a six-point lead in the standings on Portland, meaning a Timbers’ victory could vault them back in contention for two huge postseason edges: one of the conference’s two top seeds, and a potential bye in the playoffs’ first round.
For all the ups and down the Timbers have experienced recently – over the congested portion of their schedule – they still have a chance to rest during the Knockout Round. Even if they don’t reach that mark, an opening-round game at Providence Park is not only within their reach but, as the standings sit now, something to preserve over the season’s final month.
Here are three areas of focus before Saturday’s game against Dallas (7:30pm PT, FOX 12 PLUS), this week’s KeyBank Scouting Report:
1. This is the Run In
“Run in” is a term used nowhere else in American sports, but there is something intuitive about it. It’s the final stretch, the sprint toward the finish, the charge to the clubhouse, finish line, end zone. It is the place where you’ll leave your season’s final market, stride out toward your goal, and run into whatever awaits on the schedule beyond.
With weeks of schedule congestion in their past, the Timbers have reached their run in, and what is left is a paved road that will give them a platform to show what they truly are. If they are the team that went four months without an MLS loss from spring to summer; final games hosting FC Dallas, home-and-road with Real Salt Lake, and at Vancouver Whitecaps FC are a chance to not only secure the club’s first consecutive postseason appearances but guarantee a home playoff game and maybe, just maybe, a first-round bye. With five weeks to play those games, no travel beyond the Mountain Time Zone, and only one team on the schedule that’s above Portland in the standings, picking up momentum should be the expectation, not the exception.
There will be time to rest before every game. Routines will return to normal. Knowledge that has been gained through this, the staff and squad’s first season together, can be leveraged to find what the team’s true level is – something the group needs to know before game 35 comes.
That process starts on Saturday, when a stretch that will propel the team forward, solidify their current place, or expose their struggles will play out. Unforeseen injuries notwithstanding, there’s no reason Savarese won’t be able to start his best XI for each game, given the matchup.
We’re about to find out what the Timbers really are.
2. Life without Seba
Okay, so I was wrong.
When the Timbers take the field on Saturday, there will be one, obvious missing piece. It’s the player who has emerged as the most important cog in Portland’s attack; one who has become the source of so many of the team’s scoring threats. Thanks to a dubiously-issued yellow card last week in Minnesota, Sebastián Blanco will miss this weekend’s game against FC Dallas due to yellow card accumulation, leaving Savarese to compensate for the absence of one of his focal-point talents.
One way to do so would be to change formation. We saw the team go to a 4-2-3-1 look last week, one which helped reduce a three-goal deficit to one over the final 45 minutes. In construction, the Timbers’ squad is designed to play a 4-2-3-1, even if the season’s circumstances have charged a different course. Might the team build on what it rediscovered in Minnesota?
The other option is one that’s become the team’s reliable Plan B, one which works when the team only has one of its No. 10s available. With a 4-3-1-2 (midfield diamond), Diego Valeri can operate at the attack’s focus, allowing Portland to maintain its three-midfielder look while getting another attacker on the field.
Regardless, things have to change with Blanco out of the team. Giving Tomás Conechny another start – against a big opponent, given last week's struggles, and with the team having a full week’s rest – doesn’t add up, right now. Unless Andrés Flores is given another shift in attacking midfield, the Timbers might need to tweak their approach.
3. Lost: The Timbers’ defense
There’s no way around it: Portland’s defense had a terrible week. From Sept. 15’s visit to Houston through last Saturday’s loss in Minnesota, the Timbers have surrendered nine goals across 270 minutes. What once was an area of strength now is a point of doubt, with 20 percent of the season’s concessions happening in 10 percent of the minutes.
Jeff Attinella might be back in goal this weekend. That will help. If Liam Ridgewell’s ribs allow, he and Larrys Mabiala should be partnered in central defense. That will help, too, as will whatever changes Savarese might make to solidify central midfield. What surfaced last week in Minnesota can’t keep happening, going forward.
This four-games-in-five-weeks stretch gives Portland a chance to prove a lot of things. To themselves. To opponents. To others. Among those, now, is whether the defense can regain its form. Like the team, itself, there was a point where the world saw the group on a high level. Now, after their recent struggles, the back line has to show they’re capable of replicating those high marks.
