November, 2012

Songo’o

Posted on: November 30th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 1 Comment

 

I was delighted to see that sunshine had taken on the vexing question of Eric Alexander yesterday. I had been thinking that I might get stuck with the task, and I just don’t know how I could have generated 1100 words about the guy. I kind of imagine him being the subject of the following exchange:

Merritt Paulson: Who is that young hellcat sitting manfully on the bench, Wilkinson?
Gavin Wilkinson: That’s Eric Alexander, sir, one of the carbon blobs from sector 7-G.

In all seriousness, I kind of like Alexander. Or, at least, he has certain qualities that I appreciate. Not the least of which is his work rate. He’s another one of those guys about whose level of effort there is never any question. Of course, if that were the only measure of a footballer I’d be starting for Arsenal and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Unfortunately for both of us (and perhaps for all of you) it isn’t. Mr. Alexander is a hard worker, but he’s a B grade footballer. He’s useful to have around as a utility man, but there just isn’t a place on the park where you’d want him to be starting, and experience has shown that he doesn’t do well off the bench.

Well, in the words of the Bard, so much for him. The real topic for today is Frank Songo’o. As everyone reading this will likely remember, Songo’o made an impressive cameo in preseason before getting crocked and missing the first part of the campaign. There was a lot of fanfare around his signing, and why not? He’d been to La Masia, the famed Barcelona football academy, and even though he didn’t make it up through the ranks the fact that there was any interest at all indicates that Songo’o was a player of quality. He came to us after spending most of his playing days in the Spanish Secunda (most recently with Albacete). From the off he showed himself to have excellent technical ability. More importantly, he was a wide midfielder who was anxious to get at defenders and force them to make uncomfortable decisions.

Then there was the ankle injury that he suffered in a preseason scrimmage, and an enforced trip back to Spain to get his visa sorted out. All of this put his integration into the team back a few steps. When he did get it all together it still seemed like he was lacking in fitness. His touch was good, but he didn’t seem to be able to go for more than 45 good minutes before having to be substituted, often for the soldierly but less than ideal Eric Alexander. It took him rather a long time to play himself into form, part of which has to do with the structure of this league. If he’d been playing in Europe there would have been a lot more opportunities for him to get extensive run outs in reserve matches and the like. This just isn’t a common in North America (partly because of the distances involved but for other reasons as well). In any case, it seemed like Songo’o remained a work in progress for quite a while.

When he finally reached full fitness, Songo’o really began to shine. He’s a guy who thrives on direct confrontation with opposing defenders, and he also knows to keep moving without the ball. He worked more effectively with Steven Smith than anyone else on that side, although there were still a few moments in their collaboration where Smith was left with a look on his face that said, “Would somebody please move into space!?” Songo’o emergence from the long nightmare of unfitness brought a flair and dynamism to the left side of midfield that simply wasn’t in evidence when Alexander or Wallace were playing out there.

However, there was one major problem. The offense (such as it was) was really designed to work around Boyd. While Songo’o has many positive qualities he’s simply not the greatest crosser of the ball. Moreover, his favored angle of attack is a bisection of the corner of the penalty area. If you watch the available footage you will most often see that he wants to be a defender one on one and then head in toward the goal on the most direct vector. He’s not a guy who instinctively wants to get to the byline, which is fine except that that caused a bit of a problem in terms of our offense.

Songo’o’s skills, prodigious as they are, were not terribly well matched to the actual personnel that we were using…until Boyd got benched. Then Songo’o really emerged. He’s not a bad passer, and with more mobile figures able to move into the box for Portland his propensity to attack became much more of an asset. This of course didn’t mean that things magically improved for the Timbers. This had a much to do with the defensive posture of the team in the final months of the season as anything else. Even if Songo’o was going to beat defenders there usually weren’t enough of his teammates in attacking positions to really take advantage of this.

Songo’o was one of the real bright spots for this team in an otherwise rather dreary campaign. I have a strong suspicion that he will fit in well with Caleb Porter’s approach, based as it is on quick movement and dominance in midfield. I am anxious to see what Songo’o can do with a full preseason not marred by injury. With the proper level of fitness and with time in practice to work with a firmed up formation Songo’o has the tools to be a star in this league. An important question will be: who will feature around him? The answer to that will tell us a lot about how things will go next time around.

Magadh

mr enigma’s theory of productivity…

Posted on: November 29th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 1 Comment

 

there is a workplace theory recently developed that suggests productivity is reduced by giving people more responsibility than they are currently or ever will be capable of handling. this places in contention many of the work motivational theories developed by a fella named maslow and his cronies in the late 40's with new thinking that, regardless of the expectations, achievement may just require a better person than the one currently in the position. you may or may not agree with social darwinian theories, but evident in this doozy is that herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory is bunk because the content of the job is not always enough to produce success. too often in the work force people are given advancements for their achievements in one area only to show that specific area was their zenith and the advancement was an anchor to productivity. no better place to suggest this newly created and hypothesized theory to be true than sport.

i assume while reading that little intro to the meat and potatoes of the post you were thinking of certain players on the timbers who struggled with their roles and finding their feet within the team. and, without question, you were also thinking that the fired manager and the interim manager did very little to help the players they had realize their talents and best positions because they asked others to take on jobs they were not suited to take on.

which brings me to one of the more enigmatic players on the side. as we have discussed through the last bit it is more than clear the timbers need a trigger man, whether he sits behind the two main strikers or he lies deeper on the pitch and unlocks players with an incisive and defense splitting pass, it really does not matter so long as they get him. but while they were looking during the regular season, if that is what the management was actually doing, there was a player on the side who led the team in assists and had the ability to open up play for his teammates. sure, the knock on him is ability to control the ball in tight places, but that is not the only requirement of a creative player. frankly, they just need to bring thier teammates into the game, and alexander did that when given the chance.

eric alexander finished the season with a team leading 6 assists, one more than franck songoo. which is a comparison of context--alexander started only 14 games (6 of which were at the first of the season before being benched following the 3-1 loss to the galaxy--a game where he provided a tasty assist to chris boyd) and songoo started 24. but for some untold reason, a reason likely buried with the remains of john spencer's unhappy attempt at a haggis party, it appeared he was given the tag of scapegoat for the loss against the galaxy and several others. oddly, spencer suggested to his media mouthpieces that alexander had some maturity issues and could not handle the big games. which was completely his prerogative, but not something observed by the masses who watch the games.

initially, when trying to recollect the reasons for the benching, i thought perhaps it may have coincided with franck songoo's return to fitness. i was wrong. rereading through my notes and the blog posts, quickly i was reminded that alexander and songoo were the prefered starting midfielders along with chara and jewsbury.

so digging a little further, there are two instances that became the  hallmarks of alexander's 2012 season. we can all remember the humiliation felt after the timbers were handed their hats in the 5-0 loss to fc dallas. well, no one felt the heat for the loss to dallas like alexander did--he quickly became well acquainted with the pine following july 21. whether the newly anointed interim manager felt that sacking jack jewsbury for the match was the wrong decision, or that he could overlook the abysmal play of mike chabala, alexander's playing time was sacrificed for the return of the captain.

that game had two effects on the side: it set the team on an incredible winless run and it made a substitute out of alexander. we here at axe central have banged on long enough for you loyal readers to know that we think using alexander as a substitute is as useless as lipstick on a pig--neither are worth taking to the prom. alexander is the type of player who grows within the game--he is not able to jump off the bench and impose himself because he simply is not athletic enough to do so. but what he lacks in athleticism he compensates with his intelligence, and intelligence wins out over the long haul.

the other instance for the change in alexander's role, and the one i find most compelling in the discussion of why alexander did not start for the second half of the season, was moving from the diamond/442 formation to a 433/451 type formation. as simple of an explanation as it is, in the opinion of the management, nagbe must play, and in the 433 he occupies the position alexander would hold.

now, this is where i return to the theories discussed above. nagbe is not a creative midfielder. end of story. no argument. but since he has been with the timbers he has played in a role similar to the creative midfielder. though he may grow into it, he may also grow into poor habits that eventually see him sold off because the timbers never actualized his talents. however, one thing we do know about nagbe is that he is much better when playing forward, waiting for the ball, than when asked to work around defenders while looking to set a teammate upon the opposition. but because he must be in the starting eleven, he starts in alexander's role. and the side looked constipated when he did.

i am not certain what the entire formation is going to look like once porter arrives, but one thing i do expect is more emphasis on midfield play. at 24, alexander is at the prime age to develop into a creative force. but all of that is contingent on whether or not he starts. will he become another scapegoat for the failings of the timbers management to recognize the team's needs? or will he be given the chance within a better system? or will he be used as trade bait and the last thing we remember of him will be is his drive into the 18 yard box against san jose and how he dinked the ball over to dike for the smash and grab goal?

december 2, 2012 looms.

sunshine

Nagbe

Posted on: November 28th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 2 Comments

 

There’s lots to talk about today, particularly in light of sunshine’s remarks from yesterday. The central focus of this column is going to be Darlington Nagbe, and I think it’s appropriate given what sunshine said yesterday with respect to lack of a real linking midfielder. There are a lot of roles that a midfielder can play depending on the system that a team is employing. What is clear is that there needs to be some sort of effective plan for advancing the ball out of defense. It’s not as if the Timbers didn’t have one last season, it just didn’t work.

So what was this plan? Pretty clearly it was about advancing the ball up the sides. This makes sense given the central role that Kris Boyd was meant to play in attack. One piece of evidence that can be adduced to illustrate the failure of this approach (and here I mean the means of advancement not the Boyd centered strategy itself) was that Boyd was starved for service for much of the first half of the season. This led to two unfortunate consequences. The first was that, confronted with only infrequent opportunities to employ his skills, Boyd quite naturally felt pressure to make them count. Sometimes he succeeded, but often he didn’t, and given the paucity of overall chances that he got the effects of these misses were amplified. A second issue related to the lack of service was Boyd’s increasing tendency to droop back into midfield to try and get possession. This was invariably a losing proposition. We’ll have more to said about Boyd in a subsequent column, but it suffices here to say that each yard that separated Boyd from goal dramatically diminished the chances that he was going to do something useful with the ball when he got it.

The upshot of all of this is that the plan failed. When it did there simply was no other option in terms of moving the ball into the attacking zone. Here sunshine’s comments vis-à-vis our lack of a linking midfielder. We had a lot of trouble getting our defense organized during the early part of the season, and there was clearly a school of thought that said: let’s get people in positions where they can at least do one thing right. Jewsbury, Palmer, and especially Chará did a good job at policing the defensive responsibilities in that position that Claude Makelele occupied for years at Chelski. The fact that none of them had a great deal of skill or inclination in terms of moving things forward could, in a certain sense be overlook because at least having a defensive midfielder playing over the top somewhat reduced our propensity to leak goals.

This leads us to the case of Darlington Nagbe. Nagbe got moved around a bit in the early part of the season. Sometimes he played in the middle, while at other times he was shifted out to the flanks, probably in an effort to get him to bring his speed to bear. Sadly, in the latter case he generally disappeared from proceedings. Yes, Nagbe is a guy who needs to be centrally located in order to be effective. It took him a bit of time to learn the trade. He’s quick and he had better than average technique, but he’s not a guy who was born with an instinct for the perfectly timed and/or perfectly weighted pass. There is an extent to which this can be learned, and over the course of the season Nagbe became increasingly adept at moving the ball in rhythm and finding people in space.

A couple of exogenous factors contributed to his development. One was the increasingly effective partnership that he forged with Chará. One thing that can improve the effectiveness of a trigger man is to be partnered with a quick and hardnosed defensive midfielder who can win ball and regulate some of the physical play by the opposition. [Those looking for an apt comparison should look at film of Mathieu Famini who played the role to perfection]. A second factor that helped Nagbe improve was that Frank Songo’o managed to play himself fit. Songo’o is strong, technical, and aggressive. The more he worked to force defenders to make plays in him diving in from the left hand side, the more space there were for Nagbe to operate. On the other side, the mix of Alhassan (when he was healthy) and Zizzo never quite seemed to manage the same level of aggression, although to his credit Zizzo always made a fist of it when he came on.

Nagbe made a lot of progress over the course of the season. Going forward I expect this to continue. He is quick and he has good attacking instincts. By the end of the season he seemed to be thriving with the cast around him, and a full season’s worth of time with Songo’o, Chará, and some more consistent figure on the right will probably continue the upward trend. It occurs to me, however, that one thing that might really help is the addition of a real trigger man in central midfield. Nagbe got to the point that he could do a pretty decent imitation of one in the later stages of the campaign, but I’m not convinced that this is really the most effective role for him. Rather, I would be tempted to play him as what the Dutch call a shadow striker in a 4-4-1-1 formation. There, Nagbe’s skills might allow him to put more immediate pressure on the defense. It would also mean that we had someone a bit more mobile up front to assist in getting the ball forward. It’s all speculation of course, and I would be surprised to see them actually bring someone in to add to midfield, but given the weakness of our play in the season just past, it seems to me that all options would be worth discussing.

Magadh

the continued neediness is draining…

Posted on: November 27th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com No Comments

 

i know the logical continuation of the post-season review of the midfield would be to look at darlington nagbe, franck songoo, sal zizzo, or kalif alhasan, but yesterday mags stirred within me an idea. as dreadful as that may seem to you folks, it is what it is and unless i discuss that idea it might fester to explosive proportions. and if there is one thing we do not want it would be the pustules of my brain spewed too heavily within the four corners of this blog. so, forgive me the license of some blag and humor my peccadilloes of authorship.

in the last few days, we have discussed the defensive mids, their respective abilities, and how they compliment the side, good or bad. but something has gnawed at me through the last two seasons and was articulated by my good friend--the timbers have a distinct inability to move the ball forward through the midfield. typically, the timbers stick to one of two scenarios when carrying the ball forward from a defensive position to an attacking position. they either lob the ball forward, expecting some player, whoever it may be, to utilize skills most of the squad are uncomfortable using. the target must play with his back to the goal, either win a 50/50 ball in the air, or chest a ball down, turn, and find an outlet. the other option is to put the ball at the feet of a winger and let that winger run the ball forward. sure, there are other options and the timbers have employed them, but not to the degree of effectiveness they have the two primary options.

one obvious reason for the reluctance to move the ball on the ground through the midfield is the ability of the central midfielders to control the ball at their feet. take jewsbury for instance. when in possession of the ball, jack often looked as comfortable as piggy was with the conch. sure, at times he would perform the rare cruyff turn, surprising the entire fanbase with his agility, but more often than not he would look to the wings or his central defense for an outlet pass. frankly, he has never seen a sidepass or a backpass that did not look tasty enough to complete. sure, vicente del bosque said the same thing about claude makalele when the little dynamo left real madrid, but jack is no claude makalele. and while jack's insistence for the easy pass may have assisted with the overall possession stats, it sure did not assist with pushing forward and all too often placed the backfour in peril.

my concern is that much of the constipation within the midfield is attributable to the absent link up player. jack and diego chara are both defensive mids, lacking the overall prowess in their game to play a box to box role. but as is the penchant of the club, it is much easier fitting square pegs in round holes than finding the player needed in any particular position. consequently, the timbers have assured jack that he has a permanent starting position and have taken chara and placed him in the role of a box to box type. while size was never an issue with makalele at the defensive midfield position, the same can be said of chara. but chara, however, is required to push forward, attempt the link up, as well as cover for jewsbury. he does not have the luxury of midfield counterparts who are better equipped at the role he is required to play. while he is able to perform one or the other somewhat effectively, he cannot perform all functions of the box to box player--he simply is not strong enough.

as much as we like diego charra for his grit and his overall nastiness, his play would be ever more effective if he was not required to play ahead of jewsbury. i would suggest the number of fouls he commits are directly attributable to how far extended his game has become. the fact that he fouls is not of issue to me, but the number of the fouls committed has increased with the increased responsibility in the midfield. to return to the makalele comparison, claude averaged about 45 fouls per season in a 38 game season, due in no small part to his stationary role, as well as having players in front of him who can carry the ball forward. similarly, if chara were to patrol in front of the backfour, rather than in front of jack, i see a reduction in the fouls and a greater ability of the timbers to push forward through the midfield rather than the wing. of course, all of that would be contingent on jack sitting and not playing.

more importantly, the introduction of a player who can make the links between the defense and the attack would take pressure off diego and, of course, darlington nagbe. i recognize that we have not quite arrived at the timbers posterboy, so we will leave it at that. but all too often this last season supporters begged for a creative midfielder, the necessity of which i cannot agree with more than i already do. like chara, like jewsbury, like every other player on the pitch, nagbe has been forced to sit in a role he has a perfected sense of discomfort. whether the timbers seek a deep-lying playmaker, or look to a playmaker who sits in the hole behind the strike force, they need to obtain that player quickly. the absence of that player has been felt for the last two years and is keenly affecting the ethic of the side. which, obviously, should change with the new head coach. right?

enough blag for today. mags will be back tomorrow with some more player evaluations.

sunshine.

Our Man

Posted on: November 26th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 12 Comments

 

I saw that sunshine got his licks in yesterday on Jack Jewsbury. I really have a lot of sympathy for the guy. He stepped in to whatever part of the formation in which he was needed, apparently uncomplainingly, and made the most he could of the talents with which nature has equipped him. It’s not his fault he stinks at fullback. I think even he would concede that he doesn’t really have the tools. As far as central midfield goes, he’s not as good as Chará in defense, or as Nagbe going forward. Since he’s got the armband (the shifting of which invariably has seismic implications), they’ve kind of got to find somewhere for him to play, especially since they shifted pretty much the only other guy with the cred to wear it (i.e. Troy Perkins). My feeling about Jewsbury is that, much as he is a guy who can be counted on to give his all night in and night, that probably shouldn’t buy him a place in the starting eleven in and of itself. I like having him around, since you can slot him into a lot places and he can provide useful minutes. As a starter, I just think that the Timbers already have other guys who do his strengths better than he does.

But this piece is not mean to pile on poor Mr. Jewsbury. Rather, it is meant to address the contributions of Diego Chará to the Timbers’ midfield. As usual, I feel the need for a short digression.

There is a famous story about the New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel. Asked by a sportswriter what the key was to his success, he responded, “I never play a game without my man.” The writing in question thought at first that Stengel had been referring to Mickey Mantle. It was an obvious choice given that Mantle was one of the greatest hitters ever to play the game. But after thinking about it, the writer realized that the object of Stengel’s veneration was not Mantel (in whom Stengel in fact felt great disappointment), but the catcher Yogi Berra. I love this story because although he was cast as something of a buffoon in the media (due in no small part to his odd but often subtly brilliant expressions) Berra was one of the most astute students of baseball ever to step on a diamond.

All of this is a long winded way of introducing my considerations on the play of Diego Chará. Admittedly, Chará is unlikely to end up in any sort of major sports hall of fame. Yet he brings something to the Timbers that the teams can hardly do without. Like Berra, he is not the most physically imposing character. But he makes the most of his assets and reads the game as well as anyone in the league (much less anyone in a Timbers shirt).

Of all the statistics that one could use to illustrate the character of a player’s season, two are particularly apposite in the case of Chará: 10 and 72. These were the number of cautions received and fouls committed by Chará, ranking him second in the league in both categories (to Chivas USA’s Oswaldo Minda and Philly’s Michael Farfan respectively). Clearly, one of Chará’s major virtues is a willingness to get stuck in.

I criticized Chará early in the season for not really being that great on the ball. That criticism was not entirely in order. The young Colombian has a role to fulfill in the side: create mayhem in the center of the park in such a way as to disrupt the attacking impetus of the opposition. In this, Chará excelled. His main problem stemmed not so much from his own efforts and capacities but from the nature of his supporting cast. Injuries and the vicissitudes of team selection meant that the wide positions in midfield were in flux for much of the season. In addition, he spent a lot of the season as the prop to Darlington Nagbe as the latter learned the ins and outs of being the team’s trigger man. Finally, it should be noted that for much of the season the backs played an excessively deep line. Although this is understandable given the propensity of cleared balls to come right back up the pitch, it meant that the area that Chará had to cover was significantly larger, even in the friendly confines of the JW.

For all that, I think you’d have to rate Chará’s campaign a success. By the last third of the season he had managed to forge an effective partnership with Nagbe. His position in midfield was bolstered both by the emphasis on playing a higher line in defense that was implemented after John Spencer’s exit and by the frequent addition of another defensive midfielder (usually Jewsbury) to the equation. This latter move created a solid defensive spine that was difficult for opposing teams to break down. The emergence of Songo’o as an effective force on the left side also helped matters.

Still, there were too many nights when Chará was left in too much space and ended up hacking at people’s ankles after arriving late. The fact of the matter is that Chará is, so to speak, the narrow edge of the wedge of a tactical decision that the team needs to make. If they are going to play a second defensive midfielder (for instance Jewsbury or Palmer) to fortify resistance in the center of the park this dictates a diamond formation in the middle with Nagbe as the point man. This also dictates a less attacking approach, in particular because Chará seems less comfortable going forward. A better solution, at least from my perspective, would be simply to play a 4-4-2 with the defense playing a sufficiently high line keep the midfield compact. Given the defensive weakness of the team over the course of this past season this might seem like suicide, but I’m inclined to believe that a more attacking posture up front would prevent opposing teams from throttling us in the middle of the park and relieve some of the pressure on the defense. Of course, this idea would be a bit difficult to execute if the attacking theory of the team is going to be firing the ball up the pitch toward a static (Scottish) target. But that would be the subject of another story. This one is at an end.

Magadh

captain not so courageous…

Posted on: November 25th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 4 Comments

 

at the risk of outing myself as an occassional listener of a rather annoying "alternative" radio station, it is time to get back to the disaster. i am sure quoting sugarcult lyrics does little to help suggest i find gustav's voice anything but hypnotic, but they so effectively describe the halting failure that was the timbers midfield at times. i am not suggesting that the midfield never worked, but as a whole the grouping never seemed to click on either end of the pitch, let alone the one they were intended to control.

perhaps that is a result of the requirements of the roles? perhaps it is due to the fact the players who compose the midfield are too similar and not forward thinking? as mags described yesterday, in general, midfield is the connection between the backfour and the push up front. it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that midfielders need to have two minds--defense and offense. in the 4-3-3, 4-5-1, possession-play system the timbers strive to emulate, teams will typically have a holding midfielder, a link up player, and some sort of creative force. it is safe to suggest the players involved in the timbers midfield fall short of those descriptions. but if one description best fits the timbers midfield it would be two holding mids and a misplaced forward.

shockingly, with the amount of defensive specialists on the side, the timbers were not very good at preventing the opposition from scoring. nor were they effective in controlling the midfield in general. to best carry forward from the recent evaluations we have made the last month, i think it best to discuss the defensive aspects of the game. i know we have banged on and on about the goal differential, but what better statistic is there to describe the absolute failure of the side to perform the basic duties of defending? there is no hope for any side to win anything if they ship 22+ goals more than they score. no hope. ever. while we have placed a great portion of the blame on the backfour, and rightfully so, the backfour should at any point in the game have at minimum 3 other players patrolling in front of them. unfortunately, as mags pointed out and as i will drill home, most of the midfield could not be arsed to track back and assist in the other duties--even the holding mids.

when i complained about the predilection of david horst and hanyer mosquera to all too often be pulled out of position it was done so with an understanding that each player was intent on assisting where others were not. here, i can now say some of the bigger issues with horst's play were brought on by songo'o's unwillingness to track back and assist steven smith the opposition's right-wing. too often horst stepped forward because the right-wing had been given an open field to push through. in a well-trained squad, as well as one with depth and accountability, such endeavours made by the opposition would and should be cut off by the defensive midfielder.

which brings me to the primary topic of the post: jack jewsbury.

jack is a journeyman midfielder at best. he may have aspirations of being a creative force, but after two years on the side it should now be clear that his talent and skill set harshly limit his ability to pull triggers and set loose the timbers strike force. and while he occupies the defensive midfielder role for the side, it is ironic that his best days in a timbers kit were spent at right-back--a role thought to be so easy to play that any player could occupy that position.

returning to the question of why the defense was so often pulled out of position. it is important to keep in mind, a winger tracking a run did not and never should relieve captain jack of patrolling in front of the backfour and cutting off the in-roads. while we may keep that in mind, jack sure did not. jack was too often absent within the side. now, i get that a truly effective defensive midfielder will often go unnoticed through an entire match, but not due to a failure to enforce the midfield. indeed, gilberto silva, one of the greatest defensive mids in modern football, was nicknamed the invisible wall--he traversed the width of the pitch, cutting off any attempt of the opposition to get forward. i along with mags often commented that if we ever heard gilberto's name mentioned during a match it was due to the fact he made a mistake--his best games were those we never bothered to comment about his play. unfortunately, the same cannot be said about jack. if i were able to conduct some form of a reverse ludovico aversion therapy on jack, i would inject him with a serum intended to promote aspirations of becoming an invisible wall and then instruct him with hours of gilberto silva you tube clips.

i would not suggest that jack is the worst player on the side, he simply is not the smartest. he was not endowed with the qualities and charcteristics needed to perform the role of invisible wall. rarely have i seen him anticipate play, his performances are reactive rather than proactive. this too often leaves him on the opposite side of the pitch where play has developed. had he the gift of speed he could compensate for his inability to envisage play. but as we all know, jack is as slow as a slug feasting on a salt lick. jack also has a predilection to pull out of a challenge. the most disgusting of examples came in the away match against seattle where rather than challenging for a 50/50 ball he jumped out of the challenge. that is not to say he always pulled out of a challenge, but in a game of such importance against the dreaded northern scum he chose to save his ankles. that commitment is noticeable.

where his limitations prevented him from being an effective midfield general, the same limitations seemed to assist him when he inhabited the role of right-back. he had a specific role to perform, he adhered to that role, and that role required little cerebral output. frankly, i was a abashed when the move for kimura was made. sure, the timbers required a right-back, but then moving jack back to midfield would place the same requirements on midfield.

continuing with jack in the position he has held for the timbers the last two years would suggest the managment are impressed his attributes and contributions. but an occassional screaming goal from 35 yards out does not assist the club in the longterm goal of reaching the playoffs. i am not discussing the conundrum of jack as captain, which is a subject entirely separate from this post, but the presence of jack the player within the side. if he were to retain the right-back position, i might accept his place in the side. but that is not the question necessary to ask. what should be asked is whether the side could improve in either position he has held. and, if so, why does he continue to play?

have a great sunday

sunshine

Midfield

Posted on: November 24th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 1 Comment

 

(Probably) to sunshine’s great annoyance, I have been out of position for the last few days. I’ve been crisscrossing the frozen badlands on my Harley, looking for the man who framed me for killing my…well, I’ve said too much. In any case, my delinquency has left old sunshine to cover the blog during the Thanksgiving holiday. I get the distinct impression that he’s been able to spend most of it within a small radius of his own compound. Lucky him. I just abhor travelling, even when there is the prospect of massive meal that someone else is going to cook on the other end. Stupid human obligations.

Ok, grumping aside, I think it’s now time to return to the project of taking stock of the team while we have a couple of months before things get going again. Having flogged the dead horse of our defense into absolute nothingness (it should tell you something that we have a readymade subject tag on the blog’s dashboard for “defensive woes”) it’s now time to turn our collective weather eye a bit further up the pitch. I’m not 100% sure of sunshine’s view on this topic, but pace my extensive carping about the problems with the back five, my view is really that midfield constituted one of the most important problem areas in the season just past. Sure, you could look at the poor play at right back, the inconsistent play elsewhere, or the tendency to make catastrophic errors that would compromise a match’s worth of solid effort, but there is a bigger problem.

Or rather, there are two bigger problems. One is the lack of covering help from midfield. This was especially true (or especially evident) on the right side, but it happened across the board. You will notice if you watch better teams than ours (and at this point there are a lot of possible choices) that one important role of the outside midfielders is to get back and play defense over the top of the fullback on the their respective sides. Ideally, when confronted with an attacker driving down the flank, the fullback will shepherd him into the corner, using the touchlines to limit the available space and options. From a technical standpoint, this involves paying a bit less attention to the possibility that the attacker will reverse direction and head back up field. The fullback’s first responsibility (at least as I was taught the game) is to play the attacker to the corner. The thinking is that causing the attacker to head back toward the center line is a win, both because as they retreat there is less onside area in the box, and because moving in that direction takes them to where the defender’s help is (or should be).

One of my favorite moments in watching defensive sequences is that which happens when an attacker spins back and the outside midfielder on that side comes down on him like the blade of a guillotine. When the fullback and the midfielder work together it becomes very difficult to organize effective attacking play from the flanks. Sometimes the Timbers were able to create this situation, but all too often what happened was that a Timbers fullback was left to guard someone one on one with the consequence of getting beat being the sending of an easy cross from space into the box. Clearly, sometimes it is the fullback’s lot to have to play defense alone. But the failure of people like Alhassan and Songo’o (and whoever else was playing in the wide areas) to get back and help with defensive cover meant that, all too often, we were a botch waiting to happen.

The second major problem with Portland’s midfield was, as I have mentioned in nauseous detail, that they simply did not to a very good job of advancing the ball out of the defensive zone. In part this had to do with the lack of consistency in the lineup. Songo’o took a while to work himself in form. Alhassan was injured a lot and in indifferent form for much of the time that he was healthy. Nagbe has great skills but took time to learn his role, and this was not helped by those times when he was asked to play on the outside (during which he usually disappeared completely from view). Chará is a defensive specialist. So is Jewsbury, but he’s not as good. Richards did well in stretches, but is clearly still learning the trade.

We’ll get back to more extensive discussions of these players individually. Suffice for the moment to say that a major element of the problem was not merely a question of personnel but of strategy. For a lot of the season, the team’s attacking theory involved getting the ball up to Kris Boyd in places where he could be effective. Our efforts to advance the ball up the flanks, with an eye to providing Boyd with the kind of lateral service that would make him most effective, were generally stifled by teams that flooded midfield and prevented us from moving the ball effectively. Of course, it didn’t help that the right side of the pitch was a dead zone due to the lack of a proper fullback on that side. In any case, then that didn’t work, plan b seemed to be just to lump the ball up the park and hope against hope that Boyd would hold it up for one of his mates. I can’t remember that ever working.

There were stretches later in the season when Nagbe and Chará started to forge an effective partnership and we seemed to play with a bit more dynamism. This coincided with Boyd’s relegation to the bench, and it’s clear (to me at least) that there was a connection between the two things. However, the problem was not Boyd alone. Too often, players in midfield failed to move in ways that would allow the defensive players advancing the ball to make positive passes. When they didn’t, the ball got clotted up in our defensive zone and this had the collateral effective increasing the pressure on our defense to levels which it could not tolerate.

We’ll have more in the coming days as we look at the individual midfielders. For now, I leave you to the remains of your turkeys and your families.

Magadh