October, 2012

Thoughts Out of Season

Posted on: October 31st, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com No Comments

 

Blah, blah, blah, meetings, blah, blah. I’ve really gone through my excuses and I’m left with: I just didn’t get it done and now it’s almost noon on the west coast. This is really the time of year that sports bloggers hate. You spend so much time during the season working through dead spots, grinding every bit of minutia into a fine powder and then spreading it around for weeks on end. And then the season is over, and what the hell do you do then?

There are a couple of senses in which this is a year round occupation. In the first instance, because the MLS runs on the opposite calendar to most of the European leagues, I’ve certainly got plenty to do on the weekends (and even in midweek as those of you who happened to catch Arsenal’s exceedingly bizarre 7-5 victory over Reading in the Capital One Cup yesterday will know). It is at times such as these that I really envy the people I know who write for blogs that cover teams in the EPL or other major leagues. Even during the off season, a team like Arsenal generates enough news from day to day to keep Arseblogger topped off with material. Much as I have come to love the MLS, the news cycle here is a bit more relaxed. And by relaxed I mean that there are deadspots larger than the one that develops in the Gulf of Mexico every year.

This is a time when the bloggers from various teams need to band together. We need to start pitching mutual insults at an increasing pitch of fury, until there is nothing left to do but to stage deathmatches at neutral location, winner take all the Quatloos.

Sadly, I do not foresee this ever happening. Rather, I expect that the summer will look a little like this. sunshine and I will hash out a series of post-season evaluation pieces in which we dissect the performances of individual players as well as of broader segments of the squad down to the molecular level. I have an email in my box from sunshine waiting for me in my box which is either meant to invite me to a planning session for just such a series, or to inform me that an Albanian hit man has been dispatched to sort me out for real.

Anyway, most of my concerns in this regard are matters for the future. For the moment it’s still a matter of digging through the recent past. I saw that David Horst was given Man of the Match in the wake of the draw with the Quakes. That is pretty much justice as far as I am concerned. I’ve been looking back over some of my early assessments of David Horst. It took me a while to warm up to the guy. He’s not the most mobile defender at the best of times, and in those early days when he was coming back from injury this quality was particularly in evidence. At that point in the season, the Timbers defense was pretty sieve-like and Horst didn’t really seem to be much of an (or any) improvement over Brunner. With the run of games that he got in the wake of Brunner’s concussion, Horst really got to show what he can do. Horst makes of for his relative lack of quickness with an excellent positional sense and a serious degree of aggression in pursuit of the ball. He generally partners well with whoever is out there with him at center half, but the partnership that he forged with Mosquera in the middle months of the season was one of the few real bright spots.

Paired with the relatively inexperienced Andrew Jean-Baptiste for the final match, Horst did an excellent job of keeping Wondolowski and company from running us into the ground. Horst is about the closest thing this team has to a real leader. I know that Jewsbury is that captain and seems to be pretty vocal, but it’s Horst who really leads by example game in and game out. If the team is going to build around someone (or perhaps build their defense around someone) Horst would really be the guy.

I also wanted to mention that I was a little surprised at the degree to which Brent Richards fell out of the rotation toward the end of the season. There was a period of three or four matches when he really looked to be making some serious strides. Partly this had to do with the fact that Alhassan was crocked and there was kind of no one else to play out on that part of the pitch. Frankly, I never really found Alhassan all that convincing. For me he was one of the main violators in the whole run it up the alley and pass negatively malaise that so blighted this team’s offensive efforts. Richards on the other hand seemed to bring a bit of freshness. It looked to me like he was a lot more diligent about really working the ball up the wing and trying to put in crosses. That said, his game was certainly quite raw it the best of times. All too often he tried the kind of moves that work in college but which get shut down immediately at this level of football. Clearly, he has a ways to go, but his cameo in the San Jose match was at least a reminder that he was around.

Ok ladies and gents, that’s all I have for today. I need to go home to visit the Axe conclave (or to meet with the hitman). One little tidbit is this: given that Caleb Porter’s Akron Zips are playing a couple of matches within roadtrip distance for me, I am going to try to get down to see them and maybe get a little preview on what he will bring to the team. They’re playing Western Michigan on Saturday, so we’ll see what kind of match report I can generate from that.

Magadh

the tactical wow factor…

Posted on: October 30th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 8 Comments

 

as we begin the retrospective analysis of the season, i am reluctant to inquire what might have been. that is like asking what would have happened had john not met yoko—while wonderful to muse over the idea, the beatles still broke up and the incident outside the dakota apartments still occurred just as the 2012 season. asking that question is an impotent attempt at sticking a finger in the dyke only to find the damn thing was loaded and primed with dynamite. given the failures of the last off-season, there was little the timbers management could have done during the regular season to change the results. there were attempts, drastic ones at that, but they still proved to be a finger in a big hole.

while bringing in kris boyd may have signalled not only the club’s ambitions but also that the owner, though naïve in his execution, is not afraid to pull out the pocketbook when he sees a player that he believes will help the side, it did not address the inadequacies of the squad. unfortunately for boyd, whether fair or not, the big price tag brought big expectations. and it seemed to work the magic needed to get people interested in the side again, even if it failed to keep their interest for the long-term. while this may seem tangential, the curse of this management team is that it sacrifices competitiveness for marketable moments. and there have been a few moments this season. but before we get there, let us not forget that the most marketable commodity the timbers have is their supporters who will stick with the club regardless. so, why the need for marketable moments? why bring in boyd when there is a cooper (though personally i never cared for cooper--it had to do with his inability to effectively involve others and his knack for lying down on the job )? why sack spencer to get the golden boy of us soccer? why bring in ricketts when there was a well-loved, well-respected keeper and leader serving the club? i honestly have no idea, but i would venture to say the wow factor sure helped cover up the glaring issues for a few weeks at the least.

last off-season i had expected to read any day that the timbers had acquired a creative midfielder and a set of solid defenders. instead, the timbers looked to begin the season with two very poor defensive backs in chabala and facepalmer, a mercurial winger, and an injured scot. the more i consider the dealings of the last off-season the more i question whether the management referred to the quaker play book for defense against invading forces, because the acquisitions made were similar to painting logs and calling them cannons. was there really a plan set in place to improve this side? even more galling was the fact this approach continued throughout the season, leaving the timbers gutted of character as the timbers faithful were left to scratch their heads.

yesterday, in his migraine induced stupor (i am entirely sympathetic to his condition, having suffered from migraines my entire life), mags described the essence of this team’s problems: they may well have the objective of the game down—scoring goals and winning—they simply have no idea how to go about accomplishing that objective. i would suggest their player acquisition is illustrative of this problem. without an understanding of how a team wants to play, how it wants to accomplish this style and form, and how it will impose that philosophy upon other teams throughout the season, the management cannot look to acquire players who will carry out that philosophy with any sort of confidence. instead, the management looked to convert square pegs into dowels, and dowels into works of art. and it made little sense.

to his credit, gavin, whether through his numerous and continuing conversations with caleb porter, has recently identified the type of play the timbers now want to employ going forward into next season. last week he stated that the timbers know the type of football they want to play:

[we]  want to be an athletic team that looks to control games. We want to play dominant soccer. At every moment we want to put teams under pressure, which means we do need players that understand the game, that are versatile in the way that they play, and take good care of the ball in tight spaces.

well, ok, that is a plan. but did anything resembling that plan ever appear throughout the 2012 season? that is rhetorical—you know it did not. personally, i cringe whenever i hear or read the word athleticism. while being athletic is a wonderful trait, i would not look to create a team of bright dikes—as athletic as he may be, he simply does not have the skills and intelligence necessary to drive a team forward. there is something to say about intelligence on and off the ball, understanding the play, and knowing how to create the opportunities that positively bring teammates into the game. currently, the side does not have that player, which has been a complaint throughout this and last season. in numerous conversations with people in the growing world of timbers diy punditry, many of us have agreed we would rather see an intelligent player come in than usain bolt. fast as he may be, bolt is never going to see a defense splitting pass to unlock danny mwanga or kris boyd, or dribble past two midfielders before creating his own shot on goal. such feats require skill and intelligence above athleticism.

admittedly, the team did make strides toward possession football, but it failed to perform the basic tenets of the game—score, and score regularly, and defend (we will discuss the defending issues later). this is where mags point truly hit the nail on the head and bent it sideways—the possession we saw recently was not productive possession, it was the enactment of frustration. not one player knew what to do with the ball once it was at his feet, or if he did have an idea of what he was going to do with the ball the rest of the side had little idea of how to contribute in the execution. that is not just a tactical issue, but an intelligence issue. and athleticism is not going to cure those ills.

so going forward, i hope, i wish, i pray the timbers look to find some intelligent players to balance the bull in the china shop and some of the ninnies incapable of pushing forward into the final third.

well, day three of the off-season has not been so bad.

sunshine

Thoughts on a Draw

Posted on: October 29th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 3 Comments

 

Before getting down to the business at hand, I feel the need to bore you with a little (and still perhaps too much) personal information. This morning opened with my vision reduced to the scintillating pinwheel that is the precursor to a migraine. I have meds for this. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. This is the latter case. I have no way of contacting sunshine in a timely way and fobbing this column (which in any case I should have written last night) off on him. The upshot of this is that two characteristics which are pretty constant features of my writing (disorganization and typographical errors) will be rather more prominently in evidence than even frequent readers of this blog have come to expect.

But enough whinging. The match against San Jose was, in a lot of respects, a microcosm of our season as a whole. There was some parlous defending, a penalty kick conceded, and then what you might describe as a fight back if it weren’t for the fact that it was a matter of scoring on one of only two shots on goal. It’s not like we had the Quakes under the kosh for any considerable time during that match. Rather, and in this respect it illustrated our season quite appositely, we kept plugging away, tantalizingly close to creating dangerous situations until finally we managed to make something happen.

The goal was not a thing of beauty. Fortunately, there is no benefit to artistry. Dike put the ball in the back of the net and that was that. We’d managed to come back and get a point. Was it meaningless after all? Certainly, the die was cast long ago as far as our position in the league was concerned. I’ve talked in my last few posts about the value of finishing strong in terms of wanting to setup a better term next time around. Our performance on Saturday was a reasonable facsimile of a decent performance. San Jose are top of the league for a reason (actually for a whole bunch of reasons) so the fact that we didn’t get chased off the park is worth something. It’s not like the rested a lot of players. The side that SJ put out contained all their major faces. The fact that the Timbers managed to hang together and get a point of the match showed that, at some level at least, we can compete.

Allow me to wade for a moment into the swamp of Schadenfreude. Ok, Wondolowski did manage to get the goal that tied him with Roy Lassiter for the season record. He did not, however, manage to get it from open play. I take some joy from that, although in all likelihood Wondolowski and his teammates will not be bothered either way. We also didn’t let him get a second, keeping Wondolowski from breaking the record and at the same time showing that we could keep the what is far and away the league’s most prolific offense relatively quiet for the evening.

On the other hand, I must concede that I am not all that sad about the end of the season, if only for the reason that for a few months I won’t be treated to the weekly spectacle of the Timbers persistent failure to navigate the ball through midfield effectively. It’s not just that we do it poorly. That in itself would be aggravating enough. What really strikes one who watches a lot of these matches is that we don’t really seem to have a plan at all. It’s not that the strategy isn’t working, it’s that it’s M.I.A. Time and again on Saturday, the all too familiar ritual of Timbers defenders winning the ball and then proceeding to ram it up a blind alley up the wing was played out. It would help if whoever it is that they have covering over top of the central defenders (and this is most often Jewsbury) would be a little more aggressive about moving the ball up the middle and making a pass to someone moving forward. This, of course, would require the services of someone a bit more mobile and with a better ability to pass. We’ve been stuck all season with less than optimal choices in this part of the pitch, due in no small part to the need to stop the team from hemorrhaging goals. Jewsbury and a few others have done a decent job of covering Horst, Brunner, Mosquera, and whoever else was playing back there, but we end up getting put under too much pressure by our failure to advance the ball effectively.

Now, some of you might argue that, as of late, Portland has done a rather better job of holding on to the ball, at least if the possession statistics are anything to go by. But they aren’t. Running the ball up to half way and then kicking a negative pass back to one of the fullbacks is not really productive possession. It does little to relieve the pressure on our defense and allows their defenders and midfielders to pack up and press us all over the park. Yeah, holding on to the ball is better than giving it up, but dinking it around the space between the center circle and one’s own penalty area should not be confused with a really worthwhile activity.

Pretty soon, sunshine and I will start on our series of postseason player evaluations, during which we will flog this dead horse for all it’s worth (and more). At this point, it must suffice to say that the things that neutered our offense in the last match were roughly the same things that had been doing so for the bulk of the season.

I suppose I should be happy about the result, and in a certain sense I am. We’ve done a lot worse against teams that are nowhere near as good as the Quakes, so that fact that we managed to be so competitive is not inconsiderable. But now we enter a time of real flux for the team; one in which the flaws that have been so apparent for so long with have to be remedied. The questions that one has to ask are: have the people making the decisions seen these problems too, and what will they do to fix them? The last two years have not given fans of the team a great basis for optimism. We’ll talk about where we go from here starting tomorrow.

Magadh

the end is where we begin…

Posted on: October 28th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 3 Comments

 

so it has happened--the 2012 mls season has ended and now the timbers are left to gather the pieces. usually when the season ends the depression grabs me, but not today.  today i am relieved. today i can relax. the anxiety felt before each game can now be shuttered into a small recess of my brain, while the antipathy felt towards the owner and his sidekick can now subside to disbelief. sure, it may require a few weeks to get over some of the decisions the ginger interim and the fanboy made, but eventually i will be able to look back at this season with a reasonable and objective view to understanding how it all went wrong. fortunately, that is not the objective of today's post. today, i discuss the final game played against san jose.

just as the season began, rain pelted the timbers and the timbers faithful in the finale to an otherwise arid eight months of football, washing away the hurt many of those in attendance have carried for the majority of this season. as the players walked to the middle of the pitch for opening ceremonies, the angry displays directed towards the interim manager, reflecting the northend's assessment of his abilities, were replaced with a display of gratitude. 25 two-sticks with a number for each player embossed upon a portland flag were raised, suggesting that each of them had been adopted into the mythology and lore of the timbers. it was an acknowledgment that regardless of the acrimonious relationship between the northend and the general manager the players will always have the support of the fans.

as two sentiments were prevalent in the stands, two desires dominated the match: getting the ball to chris wondolowski and preventing chris wondolowski from breaking roy lassiter's mls single season scoring record at the jw. during my pre-match review of the news rags earlier yesterday, it was clear the mls was not selling the match as an end to dreadful year. how could they? no, the mls whored wondolowski's bid to become the single season scoring leader. thankfully the timbers were not willing to rollover for television ratings.

as frustrating as their play can be and was, the timbers controlled much of the match. they retained 56 percent of the possession. they won 54 percent of the key battles in midfield, and completed 78 percent of their passes. the timbers still failed to create the necessary opportunities to translate those possession statistics into tangible results. in 90+ minutes of play, the timbers had two shots on goal--dike's blocked shot and then his rebounded goal. san jose were not as profligate in attack as the timbers, but they were not much better. they had a total of 4 shots on goal and forced ricketts to make a couple fine saves.

as anticipated, the interim manager gave a start to andrew jean-baptiste. hanyer mosquera was hobbled by a ligament issue, while futty danso and eric brunner had been shelved by season ending surgeries. as they say, fortune knocks but once. had i not known otherwise, his assured and confident play suggested he had been the heart of the timbers defense all season. playing against the league's best attacking player, baptiste did not suffer the lapses of concentration that saw him removed from first team play in april. indeed, his composure belied his young age. needless to say i was impressed.

similarly, i was impressed with the decision to pull captain jack and to hand the honor to david horst. positional issues aside, horst is the type of captain this side needs--he is passionate, he gets what it means to be a timber, and he fights for his side. i may be biased in my assessment of the essential qualities, but a heart-on-sleeve approach has always been my prefered style--you know, someone who yells.

moving past my biases, the way horst and baptiste played together was flawless. the two communicated as if the partnership had been employed all season. they halted much of the forward progress made by san jose, eventually forcing the quakes to resort to lofty crosses reminiscent of doug flutie's hail mary passes, hoping wondo could cheat his way to scoring his second of the night. thankfully the two big backs cleared most every opportunity made for wondo. now, i would hate to inflate the possibilities any more than they are due, but if horst and ajb see consistent minutes together we might see a formidable pairing develop in the coming years.

the intensity of their play limited san jose to no chances on goal in the first 20 minutes of the match despite the intelligent runs made by steven lenhart. but that was only going to last so long, right? as fate has often treated the timbers this season a goal scoring opportunity was awarded on controversy. donovan ricketts came off his line to attack a long ball to steven lenhart, who had found his way behind the timbers back four. unfortunately for the timbers, ricketts did not attack the ball with anything resembling conviction or confidence. lenhart won the initial challenge and followed the ball into the timbers 18 yard box. ricketts challenged lenhart again. it was a bold and masculine challenge, but it was also from behind. often when challenges are made late and from behind they result in cards--that is the way of the world and the way of officiating football. but often in those instances the ball was not won. replays of ricketts challenge on lenhart suggest donovan touched the ball, making the challenge a good challenge. but this is the mls and these are mls officials who know more about window licking than they do about tying their shoes. the penalty was given and so was the joint position in the record books. i will put an asterisk on that record.

20 minutes later, another san jose long ball found its way into the timbers 18 yard box and nearly connected wondolowski with undeserved glory. thankfully, david horst stopped the progression of the ball when he tackled wondo. had he not done so wondo could have been assured sole position in the record books.

the second half saw an increase in the action as san jose and wondolowski attempted to create a record. that would not happen thanks to the resolve of the back four and donovan ricketts, who had two excellent saves to ensure wondo did little else but smile at his failed efforts. the first save was at the 65 minute. wondolowski took a shot from the left side of the 6 yard box that looked to be heading to the far post. ricketts stretched out to parry the ball away from goal and to ajb who cleared out of danger. the next was in the waning minutes of the match when rafael baca put in a lofted ball to goal. whether intended for wondolowski or an actual shot, the ball was on frame and had ricketts not put it over the bar it was a certain goal.

the timbers drew even within seconds of ricketts first crucial save. eric alexander, the timbers assists leader, challenged bernardez and hernandez, neither of whom could determine what to do with the ball at the edge of their 18 yard box. instinctively, he dinked the ball to dike who had followed ea's progress. dike drove the ball hard and low into busch, who deflected the shot into dike's path who made certain the second shot found the back of the net. the match would end even at 1 all.

in the end, san jose still has not beaten the timbers and the timbers picked themselves up in preparation for next season. which is where this side looks to now. long out of contention for the playoffs the final months of the season were used to determine who be in portland come february 2013. last night showed several in that starting eleven deserve a return. so, now the timbers dust off their pants and get to work preventing a repeat of this season.

i think i can speak for mags when i say it has been an honor writing about these fellas for all of you. and we look forward to engineering interesting daily posts for the off-season.

sunshine

The Final Chapter

Posted on: October 27th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 3 Comments

 

Usually it’s the first day of the season that’s like the last day of school. When you’re in school, the summer break brings the prospect of long empty days to be filled with the things one enjoys. Similarly, the opening of the season brings the prospect of weekly entertainment. That’s how it is under normal conditions, but this season has rather reversed this. The season has had so many painful moments and has featured such a long period when we were effectively out of contention for anything of substance. Perhaps it’s all for the best that it will finally come to an end.

There is an important sense in which this season has been on hold since the middle of the summer. The firing of John Spencer was a necessity when it happened. The team had no consistency, no guts, and no sense of an approach that would lead to better results. Then we entered the netherworld of the interim manager. I can remember a discussion of the topic between sunshine and myself in which the conclusion reached was that Gav had made his bed and was now going to get a sideline view of what it was like to sleep in it. Sadly, this meant that we all had to snuggle up as well.

The hiring of Caleb Porter in midseason was always going to be inconclusive, since there really wasn’t that could be done with the personnel on hand. Porter’s decision to fulfill his commitment to the University of Akron could be read as speaking well of his character. On the other hand, one could also imagine that he mightn’t have wanted to wade into the swamp of this current season. Certainly, we’ve all seen just how bad things could get under the current regime, both under Spencer, and in the interim. Perhaps Porter thought it best to allow the supporters to drain this cup of the old regime to its bitterest dregs. At least now when he arrives he will have a certain amount of goodwill, and perhaps the honeymoon will last a bit long.

If the latter was part of his thinking, I expect that he will quickly be disabused of that notion. One thing that can be said with certainty about the Timbers fan base is that the standards are high. This team needs to be turned around, and quickly. There is the basis of a competitive side (we can talk later about just who is comprised therein) but changes must be made, both in terms of personnel and approach.

Well, that is for a later time. The task at hand is to finish strong and to compel the best team in the league to enter the playoffs on the back of a loss. It will be very interesting to see what kind of side the Quakes send out for this match. On paper it is meaningless, but there is the matter Chris Wondolowski his challenge to the single season record for goals. Wondolowski, for those who don’t know, is only one goal short of tying Roy Lassiter’s record of 27 goals in a season, set during the league’s opening season in 1996. The Quakes have said that they are going to give Wondolowski every chance to tie or break the record. This suggests that they are going to start a real first team side for this match. There is a certain logic to this. At times like this the risk of injury to key players has to be balanced against the goal of maintaining playing rhythm going into the postseason.

I tend to think that they are going to go for it for real. Organizing things in such a way as to provide their star with an opportunity to achieve a major personal milestone is the kind of thing that is read by players as a gesture of earnest and support from the club. Moreover, all too often we have seen teams limp through a “meaningless” game at the end of the season only to carry that form with them when the playoffs actually start.
And then there is this little tidbit: there is every likelihood that Andrew Jean-Baptiste is going to play at centerhalf for the Timbers tonight. Jean-Baptist made four appearances early in the season (the last of which was his start in the Independence Day loss to Chivas) and has featured as an unused substitute on four other occasions. Personally, I thought he looked pretty good against Los Bimbos in March, but his other appearances made it pretty clear that he has a ways to go before he can really claim to be ready to make the jump to this level of football.

At 6’2” and weighing 200 and change, one can read his style of play pretty clearly from his dimensions. In a lot of respects, Jean-Baptiste is a shorter, rawer version of David Horst. He’s noticeably bigger and less mobile than Mosquera, and this (in addition to his lack of experience) could really spell trouble against one of the most prolific offenses in the league. On the other hand, this is probably as good a time as any to get him some time on task and see what he can do. There is not much at stake here, and this is an opportunity for him to cross swords with about as high powered and attack as he is ever likely to see in this league.

It would be nice if we could finish this season with a win. We’ve certainly showed that we can beat them on our day. Moreover, we’ve finally broken the duck on the road and demonstrated that, if we play together and stay organized, we have the capacity to get a result. I win today won’t necessarily mean much, but it would be a nice way to go into the off season, during which some rather unpleasant decisions will have to be made.

Just for scheduling purposes, the MAC schedule runs through the beginning of next month, with a couple of further matches possible depending on how the NCAA soccer finals work out. For whatever it is worth, the Zips are 12-1-2 this season, with their only loss coming away to Notre Dame. We should get Porter’s full attention starting around the beginning December. Hopefully he can bring this level of success to this level of the game.

Magadh

the long and winding road ends tomorrow…

Posted on: October 26th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 1 Comment

 

i am getting a rather late start to this post but if magadh can do it i guess i am allowed. it is not that he is a lazy fella--he is not. the reason for his tardiness is that he has found new employment after leaving the agency and his schedule is no longer as flexible as his use of the english language. at the agency he had more freedom for his expressive nature. now, he wipes noses and yells too often to realize he is yelling, which complicates our conversations.

moving on to things less personal and more personnel. tomorrow brings the end of what has been a disappointing season.  and as much as i would like to wrap the season in newspaper and drop it in the urinals at the silver falls trailhead, i am going to miss timbers football come sunday morning. but i should not get ahead of myself--san jose arrive to help the timbers kick off the off-season. obviously the two teams have separate agendas for the match--the timbers look to set the tone for next season and the quakes look to prepare for the post-season.

the last time the timbers played san jose they were left with the bitter taste of chris wondolowski's athlete's foot infested boot and his now consistently embarrassing post-match behavior. regardless of the fact the timbers have been successful against san jose, the quakes are without question the better side by a country mile driven by ben gazara on his way to the roadhouse where sam eliot awaits to get into a fist fight.

and like ben gazzara san jose has a flair for the dramatic, winning the 2012 supporter's shield by leaving it late. of the 26 goals wondo has scored this season 11 were game winning goals. what makes that factual tidbit even more impressive is that san jose has 19 wins on the season. in the last meeting he scored two late goals to draw even with the timbers, who had taken a lead through 2 excellent, danny mwanga strikes. but as we know the quakes are not a one man team. in addition to wondo, they also have steven lenhart and alan gordon. the two strikers have combined for 23 of the 71 goals scored by san jose this season. combined the three have 70 percent of the quake's 2012 offensive output. gordon did suffer an ankle knock last friday, but looks desperate to play tomorrow.

the quakes are not as stout on the other end of the pitch. even though victor bernardez has been nominated for defender of the season, the 42 goals allowed by the quakes does not suggest they are a defensive juggernaut. in the 2 games played against the timbers this season san jose has appeared to quake more than  stand firm in the back. but when a side has the arsenal san jose has and the will to use it, maybe they do not need to defend effectively. when discussing the upcoming match, sean mcauley indicated san jose's character is the element that distinguishes them from other sides, in particular the timbers

to go two-nil down and then fight back the way they did, it shows you the fighting spirit they have in the squad and it also shows you are own...

as much as i would like to continue the discussion of why san jose is a side worthy of our admiration, we all know that is not the case and that they are a bunch of thugs. what bothers me about mcauley's comparison of the two sides is the implications regarding the timbers mentality. what does it say about the timbers when they are up two-nil against the best team in the league and allow them to score late? now exclude the words "best team in the league" and read that question: what does it say about the timbers when they are up and allow the other side to [equalize] or [win] late? obviously the character of the timbers will not be addressed in the one remaining match but it is something that must be addressed in the off-season.

until then we can concentrate on the side that will likely face the quakes tomorrow. if practices are any indication of the intended squad for a match, we can expect to see the usual suspects with a few new additions. this year's first mls entry draft choice, andrew jean-baptiste is certainly to feature unless mosquera discovers the resemblance of the virgin mary in his tub of i cant believe it's not butter butter substitute and then spreads the butter substitute on his toast only to find the virgin mother in his jar of cherry preserves. it will take that sort of miracle, or not. but a miracle indeed.

joining ajb could be the assists leader, eric alexander. when i first read his name as mentioned among those practicing with the usual eleven i wondered if the mls had sanctioned the use of trialists in regular season matches. having been shut out of the starting eleven and living on the side lines, alexander has now found cultlike status for his exploits on twatterverse and the simple fact he retains the lead for number of assists. end even though the name rang a bell, i had to look up alexander in the official team roster to make certain his name was still on the official team sheet. it was there, as was his photo next to the assists leader column. hopefully his name will be there with the usual names like songoo, nagbe, dike (cough), smith, horst, and captain forever. after all, in the limited time that he has played he has created goals, and goals are nice to score when playing for reals.

with that, i will say enjoy every moment tomorrow--four long months await.

sunshine.

 

 

Under the Knife

Posted on: October 25th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com No Comments

 

For the record, and in the name of keeping sunshine from developing any more ulcers than he’s already got, this is going to be my last late post (at least for some while). I’ve just come out of a three and a half our administrative meeting, during the latter stages of which I was having vivid and intrusive thoughts of self-harm. Just a note to any of you out there working in an administrative leadership capacity: failure to provide coffee for a meeting that kicks off at 7:30 in the morning is covered under the Geneva Convention.

It’s probably for the best that it’s just about the end of the season, as the wear and tear has really begun to take its toll. Futty has apparently gone under the knife to take care of a meniscus problem. It was pretty clear that he had some long term niggle, so the whole thing isn’t much of a surprise. In similar new, Brunner has had surgery on his ankle that will keep him down until preseason next year, in all likelihood. This too was not totally surprising. How often has it been the case that a player comes back from a long term injury only to do himself in another way. It’s most often the case that leg injuries breed other leg injuries, as people’s bodies try to compensate for disruptions in the normal system. Brunner, on the other hand, came back from having his bell well and truly rung just long enough to tear something at the complete other end of the map.

The big question ahead of our season ending tilt with San Jose is: what is up with Hanyer Mosquera’s knee. According to the good people over at Stumptown Footy, Mosquera has a tight iliotibial band in his right leg. This condition was probably aggravated by Mosquera getting lowbridged like four times by Sanvezzo in the first half of the match with the Caps. Anyway, according the SF, he’s had a shot and hopes to be able to play in the last match of the season. I’m not sure I wouldn’t just shut him down at this point. The match with SJ, while not totally meaningless, doesn’t have a lot on the line for a guy like Mosquera, whose continued presence in the squad is not in doubt. He probably can’t make this a lot worse, but trying to run through a game when you’re not 100% can often lead to other adverse (and possibly more long term) consequences. On the other hand, it’s not like we have a lot of other warm bodies we can stick back there, so I suspect he’s going have to suck it up for the final 90 of the season.

David Horst came out with the following comments about winning the Cascadia Cup after yesterday’s closed training session:

It felt awesome. It is just, it's nice to get something out of the season. I know a lot of people are saying that it was still a crap season, but there are a lot of teams that have crap seasons that don't get anything out of them and at least we got this out of it.
I think it is a good stepping stone going into next year as well. You know, you get that road win, get some confidence going forward. The guys looked good. Better late than never to get that road win, so I think that we are really excited about winning the rivalry this year.

(Quote provided, once again, by the good people at Stumptown Footy)

I couldn’t agree more. There are crap seasons and there are crap seasons. Crap seasons where you end up coming out of it with a bit of silverware, especially one that you’ve denied to two of your most bitter rivals, are intrinsically better than pretty any other kind of crap season that could be imagined. This is really the first times since our ignominious ejection from the league cup that we’ve actually played for something and won it. It is hard to substitute any other experience for a match that actually determines something. The season, viewed in terms of our league position, ebbed away like the tide over the first couple of months of the season. It wasn’t something where we really were confronted with the situation in a particular moment; we just came to live it week in and week out. The match against Vancouver was the first match in months in which there was a decisive outcome to be confronted, and it should also not be forgotten that we also managed to avoid joining one of the less prestigious groups in the history of the league: teams that have gone a whole season without winning on the road.

Winning something, something tangible like the cup that is, is the kind of event that has the capacity to beget some salutary effects. Too often in this long and unsatisfying campaign, the feeling that the lads had nothing real left to play for seemed painfully in evidence during matches. The 5-0 tonking we got away to Dallas in the dog days of summer is probably the most painful example of this. The Timbers team that ran out that day looked gutted from the opening whistle. I remember saying to someone watching the match with me, “Tonight it’s not a question of if, but of by how much.” And so it was.

Actually feeling the appropriate pride in the shirt through being able to hold a cup up in front of your supporters is the kind of thing that can (can mind you) revive the competitive spirit in a side that’s been beaten down. I am not such a pollyanna as to suggest that this constitutes a turning point. It is, at best, the beginning of the beginning. Soon Caleb Porter will take the reins, and what will happen then is anybody’s guess. Well, I suppose that Darlington Nagbe has at least some idea, but even he must know that this is a new level with new parameters for Porter, successful as he has been at the college level.

Well, that’s me for today. I’m off to find some coffee and an IV bag to put it in.

Magadh