A Tall Glass of Bleach

It's the Timbers' first stinker of 2024, and it happened against a very beatable opponent. Unacceptable.

When Phil Neville met with the assembled media at Providence Park after his first match in charge (a 4-1 win against Colorado), he wasn’t exactly happy. Despite a good win to open up his tenure, he recognized that there were still issues to work on. Tonight in Charlotte, all of those issues reared their ugly head in the span of 90 minutes in an unwatchable 2-0 loss.

I struggle to find an accurate description of the first half. Charlotte had a couple of chances, and they missed all of them. But what the Timbers were doing did not resemble soccer in the slightest. Even commentators Neil Sika and Lloyd Sam were befuddled by the Timbers’ stagnant approach to this game. It resembled a group of individuals that have never played together, even though all of the players on the pitch (minus Jonathan Rodriguez) have been on this team for at least two years. Two moments define the first half. The first was an opportunistic pressure from Felipe Mora that won the ball from Charlotte goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina. The ball fell to Rodriguez, who took too many touches and was unable to get a quality shot away from a must-score chance. A penalty was awarded to Charlotte in stoppage time, but the referee correctly reversed the call after a VAR check. So the first half ended 0-0, and the Timbers had every opportunity to enter the second half on the front foot.

The Portland Timbers did not enter the second half on the front foot. Instead, the visitors continued to do absolutely nothing of value. Charlotte grabbed the lead after Zac McGraw was bypassed by Nikola Petkovic and the Serbian slotted home a calm finish past Maxime Crepeau. Unlike previous road matches, the Timbers could not find their way back into this game. A stoppage time goal from Enzo Copetti sealed the Timbers’ fate. An absolute stinker, in every sense of the word.

Earlier this week, I wrote an article about the Timbers’ struggles with ball progression. Because tonight’s performance was so awful, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. When I published it, I put it behind a paywall. For the rest of today, and today only, I’m going to remove the paywall from it because everybody needs to read it. I would like to thank those of you who are paid subscribers for your continued support, and I would encourage those of you who haven’t contributed to do so. Read this first before you continue this article. 

Now that you’ve read a deep dive into the Timbers’ attacking woes, you can understand why I haven’t been so hot on their attack. So far in 2024, the Timbers have been able to get results because they are able to capitalize on the few chances that they create. Tonight, the Timbers had 54% possession, shot the ball 6 times, and put 3 of those chances on target. Those chances resulted in a total of 0.35 expected goals. Anemic. Woeful. And the struggles of both the attack and defense are compounded by the Timbers’ inability to progress the ball. 

I asked Phil Neville about this exact problem in the post-game press conference. His response was very disappointing. “I don’t think progressing the ball is our biggest problem. We still had goal-scoring opportunities and they need to go in the back of the net.”

Phil, if you happen to be reading this, I would implore you to reconsider the statement you made. 

This data comes from the first 41 minutes, which is the entirety of the time Miguel Araujo was on the pitch. According to the match momentum chart, this period of time is when the Timbers enjoyed their best spell of play. Phil, if there is no ball progression problem, why is the darkest line on this chart connecting Zac McGraw and his own goalkeeper? Why is there almost no connectivity between the midfield and the attack? Even worse, why is there almost no connectivity between the defense and the midfield? This chart only measures completed passes, and when you add in a map of Charlotte’s defensive actions the picture becomes a lot clearer.

In The Middle Third, I pointed out how often the Timbers’ successful attacks originated in the middle third of the pitch. It often comes from winning the ball in that area. Tonight, Charlotte did exactly what I thought they would do: sit back and compress the space in the middle third. Look at how many defensive actions Charlotte had in that portion of the field. But do you want to see the worst part about it?

All of those squares indicate recoveries. While there are quite a few tackles and challenges in the middle third, so many of the Timbers’ turnovers came from Charlotte players simply recovering the ball. The ball was loose because the Timbers didn’t properly control it, and it was just a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos for the hosts. Good God.

The Timbers like to keep their shape in possession. There really isn’t any off-ball movement from any attackers trying to make space for themselves. That’s the most important thing that Evander does. He cannot afford to be left alone by defenders, so his constant roaming opens up the space for his teammates to occupy. Without him in the team, the Timbers are stagnant. No one is trying to find space, they’re just expecting the ball to come to them. Which is incredibly easy for opposing teams to defend. There’s no imagination in the attack when Evander is not in the team. It just becomes a static mess of players that are sitting ducks for defenders. None of the attacking players were on the same page today, so if some of them were trying to make runs they weren’t going to get the ball. Sometimes Timbers games make me happy, sometimes they make me sad. This game legitimately made me angry. 11 players (plus subs) combined to have a nice session of cardio in a football stadium. Those players have spent years together on this team, and they should know how to play together. Tonight, they simply didn’t care. And the most obvious indicator of that mentality was in the attack. Those players didn’t have an inkling of an idea where the space was. There was no communication. Players would just run into each other at times and lose the ball. It’s one of the most frustrating performances I have seen in a very long time, and it’s completely unacceptable.

I’m tired of talking about ball progression, so it’s time to go through the player performances. Only one player gets a passing grade, and it’s Cristhian Paredes. Despite being yellow-carded early, Paredes showed defensive tenacity and an actual willingness to progress the ball. Best player for Portland today, by far. He did his best to cover for the absence of Diego Chara, but it ultimately wasn’t enough. 

I wouldn’t put anyone else in the “good” category, but I thought Maxime Crepeau continued to be unlucky. For both goals, he was put in near-impossible situations. I am questioning the decision to give him the armband purely because the Timbers needed a leader in the center of the pitch tonight. He is a strong leader, but someone else needed to take responsibility in the areas where the team was struggling.

Juan Mosquera wasn’t particularly great, but he also was far from the problem. One of the best parts about his game is all that he offers in the attack. Tonight, the team failed to get him the ball. We all know that he isn’t perfect, but he was rushing back to cover when the Timbers did turn the ball over. Tonight is not the night to go after him. 

The only player that Neville singled out for praise was Santiago Moreno. I’m both in agreement and disagreement about giving Moreno praise for tonight. I think he was trying. He was looking for the long pass and was doing it despite moving all over the pitch depending on the game state. Moreno played on the right, on the left, through the middle, and even as part of the double pivot during certain points. But even though he was trying, he still wasn’t good enough. I do think Moreno did deserve some props for not giving up the fight, but Paredes was just as deserving of praise in spite of this result.

David Ayala was looking forward, but was having trouble executing. None of the players in front of him were showing any signs of chemistry, so I can give him a little excuse. He had to cover for Diego Chara, and he’s just not at that level yet. There are encouraging signs in every game he plays, but he was a victim of the team’s general malaise tonight. 

A striker can’t survive with no service, and Felipe Mora certainly sunk tonight. He is the player who is most affected by Evander’s absence, and none of his teammates could find him. 

Claudio Bravo had his worst game of the season. He simply did not have that dawg in him tonight. Just a shame that his off-night occurred when the rest of the team was similarly subpar.

Now we get to the worst performers, and I’m going to start with Jonathan Rodriguez. I was expecting him to feast tonight, but he was completely ineffective on the ball. That missed chance in the first half was so much worse than the one from last week in LA. He still needs more service, but he also has to score the chances that he gets. Tonight was his worst game of the season.

Eryk Williamson had trouble finding the game and finding his teammates. On his day, he is one of the best players on this team with the ball at his feet. His play has been trailing off over the past couple of weeks. I didn’t think yesterday was a “prove-it” game for him, but now he has to “prove-it” in every single match he played. For some reason, he kept shifting out wide to the left to receive the ball even though there was plenty of room in the center of the pitch. He’d receive the ball and then lose it within seconds. Tonight was his worst game of the season.

At the beginning of the season, the strongest area on the roster was center back. Not only is the most guaranteed money per player tied up in central defense, but the Timbers had 4 starting-quality central defenders when 2024 began. It has been almost 3 months, and center back suddenly looks like a massive position of worry. Tonight’s game might have been lost in the turnovers, but every center back who touched the pitch was awful. The least awful was Miguel Araujo, and he wasn’t on the field that long. He continued to aggressively step out from his line and fail to win the ball back, but he was at least trying to pass the ball long.

Dario Zuparic and Zac McGraw deserve their own paragraph. I’m a little more sympathetic towards Zuparic because being substituted but his usual standard of play has declined this season. He wasn’t willing to progress the ball and was routinely losing his challenges. McGraw was the worst player on the pitch. It pains me so dearly to call that out, but his stock has plummeted from last season. Blame for both of the goals can be laid directly at his feet. He wasn’t winning challenges, he wasn’t willing to progress the ball, and he looks closer to a USL defender than last season, when I put together a long article stating his case for Defender of the Year. That hurts. 

When the whole team is terrible, nothing good can happen. I could go into greater detail about how pathetic this performance was, but I’m going to let the head coach do it for me instead: “There’s an incredible comfort zone where you get to come into work every day and you get highly paid and you just do enough. Well, I think ‘just doing enough’ in this league or in life in general is unacceptable. Just doing enough, just thinking you’re OK, just thinking ‘I’ve survived another game.’ That’s not what ownership wants, that’s not what the GM wants, and that’s not what I want. So when I say ‘just doing enough’ that’s not enough. If you’re on the bus, great. If you’re not, then you’re not on the bus. Next week against Seattle I think you’ll see people who are on the bus that I believe in and that are willing to at least fight for the badges that we’re playing for and the incredible supporters that we’re playing for. Because at this moment in time, there are too many of our players cruising and I’ve told them and we spoke about it midweek about being in the comfort zone. And this is them talking, not me. So we have to make changes.”

I do agree with Neville’s assessment here. I show up at training every week and notice things in practice that encourage me. But when the games come, none of it shows. There was one specific drill I witnessed last week and it gave me a ton of encouragement heading into this game. I saw none of those training patterns in tonight’s loss. And that drill was perfect for this game. If those players had taken the performance that I saw in training and translated it to when it actually mattered, tonight’s result would have been completely different. But those players didn’t execute those same patterns, and they looked like complete strangers instead of a cohesive team. 

I do not have to explain how important next week’s game is. We know the opponent, they know us, and both of us are struggling. Now, there are two very important streaks at stake. The first is the one the Timbers are trying to rid themselves of: 8 games without a win. That streak is tied for the worst streak in Timbers MLS history. There have been several winnable games in that stretch, and tonight was one of the most winnable. 

The other streak dates back to 2021. The Portland Timbers haven’t lost to next week’s opponents in 6 games, which is the longest streak for either team in the rivalry. That is the one that cannot be lost, no matter what. Both streaks can be killed with a win, and the Timbers haven’t been this desperate to return home since 2019. This schedule has been a gauntlet, but change is coming. It will get better. This is the first certified Timbers stinker of 2024, and good God it was a bad one. But results like this will increase pressure on the players who aren’t on the bus, and hopefully they will get back on it. If they don’t, their time in Portland is probably over. Next week is the game that everyone has to wake up for. Last season, the Timbers laid a comparable egg in Vancouver. The following week, they embarrassed their biggest foes in exhilarating fashion. Can a similar performance follow next Sunday? The heat is officially on the players (not the coach) more than ever before, and they will have to respond.