The Middle Third

The Portland Timbers are conceding and scoring goals at a lightning pace. How can they fix their two biggest issues?

*Cover photo credit to Thomas Lal/Cascadia FC*

So far in 2024, the Portland Timbers are 2-4-4 with 10 points through 10 games. They have scored 20 goals and allowed 21 for a goal differential of -1. On the surface, it looks like the Timbers are at opposite ends of the spectrum. While they are scoring a boatload of goals (2 goals per match, 3rd in MLS) they are horrific at keeping them out (2.1 goals conceded per match, 2nd-worst in MLS). So a couple of easy assumptions can be made: the Timbers are elite in attack but tragically awful in defense. However, over the past couple of weeks, the numbers and the eye test do not match either of those assumptions. It’s time to dig into the Portland Timbers’ biggest flaw in 2024, and it has nothing to do with defending.

When Phil Neville was hired as the 4th full-time head coach in MLS Timber history this offseason, many fans were wondering what he would be instructing the players to do on the field. The Timbers have had one identity over the previous 10 years: defend the box and then quickly counterattack into the space behind once they win the ball. This style of play has been successful, but over the past two seasons the defense wasn’t holding up their end of the bargain. And if the defense was locked in for a game, the attack was having trouble scoring goals. Many different things can be blamed for that, but there is no point going into it. It’s a new era for the Timbers, and all that matters is what the team is currently working on. Neville wants this team to become a ball-dominant team. Well, he has 10 games under his belt, so let’s check in on how that is going.

In 2024, the Timbers are struggling with transition. That word carries a double meaning. Not only are the Timbers having a hard time with the switch to a possession-based system, their transition defense has fallen apart. Both of those issues are linked with one common thread, and it’s the Achilles’ heel of the Phil Neville Timbers: ball progression.

But Jeremy, you silly man, how can ball progression affect the Timbers’ defense? Well, every goal scored or conceded doesn’t happen because a shot finds the back of the net. Every goal happens because of a sequence of events that ends with the ball in the back of the net. Let’s start with the first goal of the 2024 season: Eryk Williamson’s 9th minute strike against Colorado.

This sequence begins with Cristhian Paredes passing the ball to Eryk Williamson. The screenshot comes from right after Eryk takes his first touch. Before I go any further, I’m going to take note of one important fact: this play begins on the edge of the middle third. 

Eryk takes a touch, and passes it back to Diego Chara. Chara passes it out to Juan Mosquera on the right side, and now the actual attacking phase of play can begin. 

Juan exchanges a quick 1-2 with Santiago Moreno, and now the ball is in the box and ready to be played back into the center. Antony is unmarked on the left side, but the easier and more dangerous pass is back towards the penalty spot and all the open space around it. When Juan plays this ball, Eryk hasn’t even reached the top of the box yet. Dairon Asprilla has done an excellent job of occupying Moise Bombito and Keegan Rosenberry, so Eryk has plenty of space to run into. 

I’ve already highlighted this exact frame in an article before, but it’s such a perfect picture that it’s worth including again. Eryk is going to loft this ball past Zack Steffen at his near post, and Dairon Asprilla knows exactly what his teammate is about to do. To create this goal, the Timbers effectively moved the ball around in the middle third before launching a direct attack that paid off with an excellent goal. In 2024, this is how the Timbers have been able to score so many goals. They usually keep the ball in the middle third before releasing a quick and direct attack down the wings. By doing this, the Timbers are essentially creating attacks at counter-attacking speed from a short spell of possession. It is working in the short term, but the Timbers are struggling to keep the ball in the middle third. Although the Timbers have scored 20 goals in 2024, 1 of those came from the penalty spot and 1 was an own goal. Portland has the highest NPxG-G differential in the league (+7.4). This rate of overperformance is not sustainable, and in order for the attack to improve the Timbers have to improve their ball progression. 

The next goal that needs a closer look is Dairon Asprilla’s 18th minute strike against DC United. I’m going to count the number of passes in this goal-scoring sequence. This play begins from a free kick on the left side of the pitch. The ball is passed to Zac McGraw, who then finds Juan Mosquera. That’s where we find ourselves, with two passes so far in this sequence.

Pass number three is from Juan to Santiago Moreno. Santi performs an excellent body feint to lose the defender and he suddenly has a ton of open space to run into.

The fourth pass is the final pass of the sequence. Santi has carried the ball to the edge of the area and has slid it across the box for Dairon to hammer home. The Timbers only needed four passes to create a goal from the top of their own box. Quick, direct, and effective. Santi’s turn after receiving the pass from Juan opens the space necessary to immediately start pushing downhill. The Timbers have scored with only one pass in the middle third of the pitch. There were only three passes in the middle third (and borderline middle third at that) in Eryk’s goal. Teams have figured out how to limit these opportunities, and they’re often so effective at it that the Timbers are often entering halftime behind the 8-ball.

OPTA has a couple of great metrics that highlight how teams attack. They’re nice enough to put it on an easy-to-read graph.

Based on the numbers (and the evidence I’ve already highlighted above) the Portland Timbers are a fast and direct attacking team. They don’t create chances out of long spells of possession, but they use good movement and ball-carrying around the box to open up space. They are still a counter-attacking team.

I’ve gone through every game this season and highlighted the game state when each Timbers goal has occurred. Here are my findings:

Leading: 4

Tied: 7

Trailing: 9

During the Timbers’ first 3 games of the season, they scored 4 goals while they were ahead, 3 goals when they were tied, and only 1 goal when they were trailing. When the rest of the season is added in (the entirety of which is the current 7-game winless streak) those numbers have changed drastically. The only number that has remained the same is the 4 goals while they were ahead. +4 goals while they were tied, and a whopping +8 goals while they were trailing. During this winless streak, the Timbers have erased 1 deficit of 3 goals and 2 deficits of 2 goals. Because the Timbers are doing an excellent job of scoring when they’re behind, I wanted to figure out why. Let’s take a look at the first equalizer that the Portland Timbers scored in 2024: Antony’s 85th minute goal at Yankee Stadium.

I’m going to start this breakdown by noting the time at this screenshot: 83:49. I need to fill you in on what happened in the previous minute. Zac McGraw got fouled in his own half (on the edge of the middle third) and restarted play by kicking the ball back to Maxime Crepeau, who passes it on to Kamal Miller. Kamal beats a NYCFC player on the dribble and attempts a long diagonal to Juan Mosquera on the right. Juan finds Antony a couple of yards ahead, but the Brazilian passes it backwards to Cristhian Paredes. Paredes plays it back to Evander who switches it to Eric Miller on the left flank. Eric passes it back to Santiago Moreno who decides to carry the ball past 2 NYCFC defenders before the ball gets intercepted and cleared to Kamal. That’s where we pick up. Sorry for that explanation, but it’s important. In that sequence that ends with Santi losing the ball, there are 8 passes. Two of them are completed in the middle third before Kamal switches the ball to Juan in the final third. The remaining six passes are completed in the final third of the pitch. 

Kamal’s next move is to pass the ball to Evander, who hits a good pass to Juan on the right. That’s two passes in this new sequence, and none start and finish in the middle third. 

Juan keeps control of the ball through a tough challenge and is able to reach the endline to attempt pass number three: a cut-back ball to the penalty area for Antony to smash home. Three passes in this sequence. Portland was able to score here because Kamal Miller’s initial long diagonal pass bypassed the middle third entirely. That ball led to Moreno losing the ball in the area, and when Kamal intercepts the weak clearance he’s already across the center line. The actual chance is created due to Juan’s hard work, but there is no pressure in the middle third here. When NYCFC took the lead in that first half, they did so by preying on the Timbers’ inability to move the ball through their press in the middle third. They kept up that press for about a half hour before the Timbers were able to make a couple weak inroads to the NYCFC box. In the second half, they abandoned their press entirely. That’s the common theme between all of these second half goals during this winless streak: the opposition simply lets the Timbers enter the middle third once they’ve built a lead. “We can’t keep giving teams 2-0 leads and expect to win games of football,” Phil Neville said after Saturday’s loss to LAFC. Well, where are those deficits coming from? What area of the Timbers’ game has led to these situations? The easy answer is poor defending, but the main culprit is ball progression.

One of the best ways to defend is to simply keep the ball. But the Timbers are still struggling with that aspect of play. In the first half against SKC, Portland only managed one shot. That shot was from Jonathan Rodriguez in the 6th minute. The hosts weren’t pressing, but they were ceding much of the middle third to Portland. But the Timbers couldn’t turn that possession into chances. In the first half, the Timbers completed 142 passes in their own half compared to 85 in SKC’s half. But good ball progression isn’t just about completing passes or carrying the ball forward. Portland is having trouble progressing the ball because their attacking positioning in possession is pretty out of wack.

This is what the Timbers’ shape in possession looked like during the first half of the SKC game. I don’t have a problem with the back four. It’s not the biggest issue here. Eric Miller and Juan Mosquera are in the middle third to help progress the ball. The congested middle of the pitch is where the problems arise. The Timbers had a combined 336 touches in the middle third in this game. Compare that to 106 touches in the attacking third, and only FIFTEEN in the penalty area. The Timbers are having trouble moving the ball into the final third and keeping possession. Many of their passes go directly to feet and not into space. That’s both a positive and a negative. Passes to feet help the Timbers maintain possession, but they aren’t really dangerous in the way that passes into space are. The Timbers, especially on the road, are able to start attacks when they win possession in the middle third or the final third. But they’re also sloppy at times when they regain possession, which can lead to disaster.

The YouTube highlight package starts the clip with Cristian Olivera already in the final third. In order to get here, Juan Mosquera has to pass the ball right to Ryan Hollingshead. The LAFC left-back passes the ball to Olivera, who receives the ball at the halfway line. The Uruguayan carries the ball all the way to this spot on the field, where the highlight picks up. 

Claudio Bravo has been shadowing Olivera during his run, but elects not to pressure the attacker before he gets into the penalty area. This is pretty smart from Bravo, because his delay has allowed more Timbers to recover. He stymies the Uruguayan, but doesn’t win the ball. 

Because the hosts have tilted the field so heavily towards the Timbers’ goal, any support player will find themselves in acres of space. In this case, the support player is Timothy Tillman, and he does have to put this ball where Maxime Crepeau can’t get it. Guess what? That’s exactly what he does. Portland committed so many numbers forward that they were undone by a two-pass sequence that covered the entire field. Mosquera’s giveaway was comical, and good teams punish mistakes like that. 

The 2024 Portland Timbers have a habit of committing numbers forward and then losing the ball. American Soccer Analysis has a stat that measures how many passes are expected to be completed. The Timbers are underperforming this number by 56.34, which is the 7th-worst mark in the league. Although they are firmly in the middle-of-the-pack in terms of pass completion, they could and should be doing a lot better.

When the Timbers commit numbers forward, they leave themselves wide open at the back. In the previous example, Olivera was able to carry the ball unmolested from the halfway line to the box. There is way too much space to be exploited by opponents when the Timbers turn the ball over. And they will turn the ball over. The Timbers are at their best when they can execute quick, direct attacks from the opponent’s half. They need to fix two different problems that overlap: ball progression and defense. So what is the most logical way to fix both of those problems with one easy tactical switch? 

I’m about to show maps of defensive actions from 3 separate games. In two of them the Timbers had to come from behind and in the other one the Timbers scored the first goal. 

When the Timbers traveled to Columbus, they held a solid defensive shape and counterattacked when they needed to without extending their lines too much. It was a really good defensive performance despite the two goals they conceded. The game plan for this match worked aside from a thunderbolt and one missed mark. 

This is from the Vancouver game. Notice how high the average height of defensive actions is. In the second half of this game, the Timbers decided to be more aggressive in defense and pushed their line of confrontation higher into Vancouver’s half. And it worked. They forced the Whitecaps into mistakes and then were able to capitalize on them. 

Ditto for the SKC game. This is the highest average height of defensive actions that the Timbers have had all season. When you look at these maps, the solution to the defensive struggles and ball progression is clear.

In order to solve both problems, the Timbers need to defend higher up the pitch. The easiest way to play against the Timbers is to press them to death. Clog the middle of the pitch, which forces the ball out wide, and then capitalize on the inevitable turnover. I noted in my Vancouver recap that the Timbers’ ability to compress space in the opposition half was key to getting them back into the game. Not only does it tilt the field towards the opposition’s goal, but it also allows the Timbers to force high turnovers that they can quickly turn into direct attacks. When they win the ball up the pitch, they don’t have to progress it through crowded midfields and the middle third. They can focus on getting the ball into the box and scoring. Their biggest attacking hurdle has been cleared. 

So far in 2024, the Timbers are allowing the 3rd-most touches per 90 in their own defensive third. They’re also allowing the 5th most touches per 90 in the middle third. It’s way too easy to progress the ball against the Timbers’ defense, and they’re often failing to win the ball back immediately. Passes per defensive action (PPDA) is a stat that measures how effective a team is at winning back the ball after losing possession. It should come as no surprise that the Timbers’ number of 14.1 is 5th-worst in MLS. PPDA is also used to measure how intense a team’s press is. This number confirms that the Timbers rarely press. But based on their attacking metrics, they absolutely should be pressing much more often.

If they’re defending higher up the pitch, the killer counter-attacks that are the Timbers’ downfall can be minimized by a well-organized counter-press. With plenty of bodies already in the opposition half, the Timbers can quickly win the ball back without exposing the backline. On Tuesday, Phil Neville spoke to a gathered group of reporters. “There needs to be a change…there has to be a change in mentality. We’ve said we’re going to be an aggressive team.” 

Nothing is more aggressive than a well-organized press. Last season, the Timbers had all the pieces to become a good pressing team. In the latter months of 2023 under Miles Joseph, they moved their line of confrontation farther up the pitch. The results started coming, but it wasn’t enough to make the playoffs. As the Timbers continue to build their new identity under Phil Neville, they have to make a couple tactical changes. The upcoming schedule features plenty of home games and away trips to weak opposition. The toughest part of the schedule is nearly over. Now is the time to change, and to climb back up the Western Conference table. But in order to climb back up, they need to create more chances and they need to defend better. An aggressive press solves both issues, and will ensure that the Timbers dominate the middle third, not just occupy it. 

The Portland Timbers have the second-worst expected points in 2024, and a lot of it comes from their attack. They’ve been able to overperform that expected points number by one (10 points earned compared to 9.03 expected points). A tactical change is needed to boost the attack and help protect the defense. If something doesn’t happen soon, it will be hard for this team to win games. They have to assert their dominance in the middle third, or else this season will continue to get worse. Let’s bring back that graph for a second.

Some of the best pressing teams in MLS are in Portland’s quadrant. All of the numbers are telling the Timbers to press, and so far they haven’t been doing it. The only exception to that is when they’re severely trailing in a game and have to initiate a press to quick erase the deficit that they’ve created. The numbers do not lie. A press would help the attack and the defense, and the Timbers would be able to own the middle third.