lovel palmer

Valeri, whoa-o

Posted on: January 4th, 2013 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 2 Comments

 

valeriGood morning all. I’m currently not feeling like a visit from the Grim Reaper is imminent, and that is really something to celebrate given my recent run of form. With the days getting longer it seems like the MLS rumor mill is cranking up as well. This is good news for yours truly and for bloggers everywhere. The long winter break is a time when those of us in the blogging community are seldom further than one defunct idea away from a column devoted to feelings…not feelings about anything in particular, just feelings. I don’t think anyone wants that, but when you open up News Now for the bajillionth time to find nothing but fluff pieces be people just as desperate to fill column inches as you are, the temptation to turn this space into a venue for the psychoanalysis of oneself is almost overwhelming.

Well, we’ve now got a bit of substantive news to talk about, so let’s get to it. It appears that the much maligned Lovel Palmer has joined the ranks of FSL. At least that is what is indicated by this article pulled off the interweb. Who am I to disagree with the interweb, I ask you? Anyway, this is good news if true. Palmer was a poster child for our failings in defense in the year just passed, and I for one am glad to see the back of him. I will say, as a matter of human decency, that Palmer was not a bad guy. He definitely worked hard in the shirt, and for that he should be given credit. However, it is the other side of the ledger that must absorb our attention when thinking about Palmer’s time in a Timbers shirt. Palmer started the year at right back and was the proximate cause of a lot of bad things. He simply did not have what it takes to get appropriately close to opposing attackers. The result was that even the mediocrities currently infesting the Revs locker room were able to throw in leisurely crosses all afternoon. Of course, they scored on just about their first one, so the addition of the subsequent efforts really amounted to a simple addition of insult to injury.

I suppose that I’ve said all of that time and time again. Palmer was, overall, a minus asset for the team. You could say a lot of things about the guy, but the simple fact of the matter is that he’s off our books now and we can all move on with our lives.

On a more positive note, we are apparently in the process of signing up the services of out of favor Lanús midfielder Diego Valeri. It’s a little hard to know exactly what’s up with this guy other than the fact that he’s got brown hair and a pleasant smile. Ever since the Argintine league nearly collapsed a few years ago it’s been uncommonly difficult to catch matches from down there in the northern hemisphere. He helped Lanús win their one and only Apertura title in 2007, then he was loaned out, first to Porto (where he made 12 appearances) and then to Almeria in the Spanish Segunda (where he made 9). He was back with Lanús in 2011, captaining them apparently, as they came runners up in the Argentine Clausura. The deal is apparently for one year. Not much else is available in terms of information.

There hasn’t been anything in the way of official confirmation of this deal, so it’s still just at the rumor stage. Part of the rumor is that the reason behind the who thing is that Valeri had some kind of difference of opinion with Guillermo Barres Schelotto, formerly of the Columbus Crew, who currently manages Lanús.

Once again, it’s hard to know what’s up with this guy, as even Youtube is a little sparse when it comes to him. I did find these clips (Clip 1, Clip 2), which give one some idea of what Valeri looks like. On the evidence of this he appears to be reasonably quick, and to be a player who likes to get forward and is able to put in a decent cross, which is a useful thing from the perspective of this team’s current needs.

The time will probably come, indeed it may be coming soon, when we can look within our own borders for the kind of talent that will really take a team forward. That day has, however, not arrived yet. The Timbers have had mixed results from their forays south of the border to snag better talent. Clearly Diego Chará is a win. I think you’d have to put Hanyer Mosquera in that category as well. James Marcelin, less so. Rodney Wallace, well I suppose that the jury is still out, but if I were him I wouldn’t necessarily be making any major real estate purchases in the local area. In any case, I think that the team has done a pretty decent job so far in expanding the range of their talent search and trying to scour the corners of this hemisphere for possible talent upgrades. The Argentine leagues are not a bad place to do this either. The football down there tends to be pretty good in terms of technical quality, and the players in that league definitely learn something about how to ride out heavy tackles. Given the economic instability that periodically afflicts Argentine football, it might not be a bad thing to try to keep one’s hand in in terms of recruiting, since when the checks don’t get paid, as they periodically don’t down that way, people often start looking for firmer ground.

Ok, so the balance sheet for today apparently reads: Lovel Palmer out, shifty 26 year old Argentine midfielder in. That looks like a winning bit of business for us. Here’s hoping it actually comes to fruition.

Magadh

A Light in the Darkness

Posted on: December 16th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 1 Comment

 

How dark the world seems just now. For reasons that are probably obvious I’ve been trying to stay away from the news (the real news that is). Every time that one has the vanity to think that human beings have plumbed the very depths of barbarism something always seems to arise by way of correction. Looking around for distractions, I was watching some of this year’s rugby internationals. I was struck by the scenes at the opening of the 6th Tri Nations Test between South Africa and New Zealand. During the playing of Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika you could hear voices absolutely thundering around the ground in Johannesburg. Does South Africa still have a lot of problem? Undoubtedly. Have all (or even most) of the questions of race in South Africa been resolved since the fall of Apartheid? No one believes that. But if you had told me in 1984 that I would someday see a crowd of 80,000 predominantly white South Africans singing an anthem in Xhosa and Zulu and Sesotho (in addition to English and Afrikaans) I would have said you were nuts. The world is dark these days. But every now and then people make moves toward human betterment. Take a moment to think about that.

In other matters that are not directly relevant to the main subject of this blog, I was pleased to see the news about the formation of Portland franchise in the new women’s professional league. It seems to me that it’s always viewed as a little uncool to express interest in the women’s game among male soccer fans. I spend a lot of time around student athletes and I’ve seen the salutary effects that sports have on young women. Participation in sports brings out courage, toughness, and confidence. It’s helpful to have top level professional opportunities for student athletes to model themselves after. As such, I think women’s professional soccer is great, not only on its own merits but also because of the salutary effects that it has shaping powerful souls. Anyway, I think their name is cool, and they have a pretty dynamite badge as well.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: through the vicissitudes of the re-entry draft it appears that we have, in effect, convinced FSL to trade us Will Johnson for Lovel Palmer and some dough. If this trade had been offered to us straight up before the draft I would have advocated that it be accepted immediately, so I’m glad that things have turned out this way. I was reading sunshine’s column yesterday and I noted with interest his comment that Palmer’s problems might have something to do with a lack of confidence. My first response is that his most telling lack is not so much confidence as awareness. So often one looks at him on the pitch and finds oneself asking, “Why is he there?” or “What does he think he’s doing?” Yes, I have thought these things, although liberally sprinkled with expletives. But on further review I think there might actually be something to this. Having played a fair amount of club football, I can tell you as a person who as not very fast that this is the kind of thing which provides a disincentive to getting close to opposing players. Maybe his failings have been caused by a mix of slack pace and excessive self consciousness. In any case, I’m much more sanguine about meditating on these questions with Palmer plying his trade in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains.

And as for the other news…well there isn’t any. The fact that we’re making a serious play for the services of Mix Diskerud has been bouncing around the interweb, but there really isn’t any new information available. Still it’s the kind of thing that gets the blood moving. So many of the team’s moves in the recent days have been oriented toward stiffening a side that suffered from a devastating lack of both leadership and resilience last season. It’s right and proper that this should be done. And I can kind of see how this might be the first priority. The Timbers were the sort of team that all too often seemed to be one setback away from the wheels coming off. We didn’t get battered all that often, but I (and I’m sure many of you out there) spent a lot of time worry about the possibility that the bottom was going to drop out of the tub and that we were going to get a real tonking. Bringing more veterans into the side should at least mean that we have a bit more stability and that conceding the first goal isn’t going to be a death sentence.

But fixing the edges of the squad is one thing. If this team is really going to compete it’s going to need a boost in terms of the overall level of quality. If you go back and look at the columns that we have written over the course of the season, you will find that we very often returned to the theme of our need for a really creative player in midfield. Nagbe spent a lot of the season trying to play this role. Having seen an awful lot of him, I’m really of the opinion that this is not his best role. For my money, I tend to think that Nagbe would do better playing slightly further up the pitch and not feeling the need to be the trigger man on every single occasion. Diskerud could give us some real dynamism in a part of the pitch where we very much tended to be static and predictable.

Well, I’m going to try not to get too far ahead of matters. A lot of things would have to line up right for this to happen, not the least of which would be that we manage to convince the player himself that he wants to be associated with a team that is long on supporter passion but short of positive results.

Magadh

you say yes, i say no…or so it goes.

Posted on: December 4th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 7 Comments

 

i entered the transfer season with great anticipation for a cull of the deadwood floating around the timbers clubhouse. after yesterday's movement i was not disappointed. in movements best described by the silly, yet classic beattles cut, "hello, goodbye," day 1 of the anticipated implosion was a day to bring both feelings of happiness and shock. there were the trades and declined options envisioned and assumed to be no-brainers, notably lovel palmer, kosuke kimura, and steve purdy. and then there were the shockers.

i know that many have their attachments to certain players for reasons as varied as there are lightbulbs in peacock lane, but we have to be reasonable and objective in our understanding of the trades that took place. i also know many of you may consider me to be a curmudgeon, who has no ties or love for any players on the timbers, an opinion made easy by my usual malcontent writings, but do not be fooled--i have several favorites. two of which were sent packing yesterday.

we here at the axe have composed reams of pixels regarding our admiration of steven smith. in numerous conversations we have had (and we do actually talk with one another), both mags and i considered steven smith to be well entrenched within the future plans of the timbers. neither of us envisaged what would transpire monday afternoon. yes, on sunday i assumed something was up when smith began to express his discontent with keybank. i get it--banking on a sunday cannot be easy. right? if that was not enough of a hint that something was up, the description of the day being a really hard one sure could have been. but, you know, i could have always been adding two and two and coming up with 53. but the writing was pretty clear. still, when it was announced that the timbers had declined to re-sign smith i felt a twinge. just a little.

there are players who embody what it means to be a timber and then there are those who just do not get what it means. those who embody the ideal are not always the best players on the side, but they are the players who give everything on the pitch. and let's face the fact that smith was not ever going to be considered the best player on the side, having made some notable mistakes that lead to some embarrassing moments in the timbers mls history, but he tried and did everything he could with his talents. at the end of the season he was a player we all placed our trust in--if, by the end of last season, we actually had faith in any of the team.

which leads me to the trade that shocked most of the timbers faithful. eric brunner did not have the season we had all hoped for--he was nutted early on and really did not regain optimal fitness until the final couple matches of the season. by then the worm had turned and it was clear that his position had been usurped by david horst. i am not sure whether he could have added to the side next season given porter's love of athletic, mobile players, who have on-ball skills. brunner is the prototypical centerback who uses his body and wits to clear balls from danger rather than a modern back, who holds ball skills within his repertoire. that is not to say horst does, but there may yet be more in store for the team i the coming months.

i always suggested the side needs another centerback and the move sending brunner to houston makes sense on many levels, not least of all the ones enumerated earlier--he has health issues. though it does leave the timbers short on vocal leadership. it is a shame to not see him wear the captain's band on a permanent basis, but with jack around that really was never an option.

in a strange and ground breaking move, gavin obtained the homegrown rights to the energy drinks and akron's outstanding defensive mid, bryan gallego. i know i may give gavin a bit of stick. and for good reason. but i do give credit where it is deserved and yesterday the bus driver earned a compliment. as shocking as it may be, gavin did something, to my knowledge, that no other general manager has had the vision to do. in the mls roster rules, the definition and limitations on the homegrown players are thin at best. section II(f) states:

A club may sign a player to his first professional contract without subjecting him to the MLS SuperDraft if the player has trained for at least one year in the club’s youth development program and has met the League’s Homegrown Player criteria. Players joining MLS through this mechanism are known as Homegrown Players.

There is no limit to the number of Homegrown Players a club may sign in a given year.

that is it. all. nothing more to guide teams in how to acquire homegrown players, only that there is not a limit to the number of homegrown players that can be acquired. so, with in combination with II(d), which states

Players, SuperDraft and Supplemental draft picks, allocation money, allocation rankings, and international player slots may all be exchanged in trades...

it seems gavin made use of the obvious lack of restrictions on homegrown players. and because the homegrown player designation is a protection from the super-draft, a trade of the homegrown rights seems within the spirit of the guidelines of II(d) because it is essentially trading away a superdraft pick. sure, that is a simplification of the process but the best analysis possible--it is, after all, unchartered ground.

finally, the option on rodney wallace was declined which means he is re-entry draft bound, but most likely this is a ploy to renegotiate his contract. i would not be heartbroken if the front office forgot to make that last call to the rodwall's agent. i know some rate him as a midfielder, but i do not.  and i really do not rate him as a midfielder within porter's system--a system that requires footballing intelligence. porter's system requires players to control the ball, to retain the ball, and to think beyond just the next pass. too often in the last two seasons, when required to do any of those aspects of footballing, the rodwall just froze. he may have something that resembles athletic ability, but he does not have the footballing intelligence to succeed in the years to come. this is not a knock on wallace as a player, or a person--he may well perform lights out within a different system, but i doubt it will be porter's.

i will have more analysis regarding the trades and roster moments later, once the fervor has settled down. and i do not anticipate that to be for a few more days. so, for now we have a new midfielder and a new fullback. both will johnson and mike harrington are great additions. more on those later.

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 other guys…

Posted on: November 17th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com No Comments

 

it really does not take a genius to recognize that over the course of a season a team will use several players in a position--any position. and with the timbers, central defense was not immune to that type of shuffle. whether due to tactical preferences, injury, or  awarding a servant of the club an opportunity to face a bitter rival in a heated clash, the management rotated between 5 centerbacks and god knows how many pairing combinations. ultimately, the primary partnership of david horst and hanyer mosquera won out. but in developing that pairing we saw eric brunner, futty danso, and andrew jean-baptiste stand in and at times hold their own against formidable sides and players who are lengths ahead of the talent currently on the timbers side.

at the outset of the season eric brunner appeared to be the logical and automatic choice to start at centerhalf, with his partner falling in as talent and necessity dictated. he had a good start to his career with the timbers after being claimed from columbus crew and was the man who directed the movement of the back four. while the -8 goal differential was nothing worthy of a christmas card, brunner's leadership did work given the players around him. so it was a right concern when he went down with a concussion in may. ever more telling of the affect his loss had on the side is the fact that without him the timbers had a -20 goal differential. obviously numerous other factors likely contributed to the goal differential, but you cannot deny that -3 differential during the three months he did start was a shadow of the 5 months that followed.

it goes without saying that it is a cruel set of circumstances when an injury to one player opens an opportunity for another, but that was the case for david horst. before eric brunner took a knock on the dome he was the leader of the back line, the voice, and the steadying force. but he was not only a vocal player, he lead by example. likely too much so, but that is his style of play--he left everything on the pitch.

for me, the pivotal match in the season long decline of the mls incarnation of the timbers was the april 2012 match against chivas usa. the one team supposedly worse than the timbers put on a clinic against the timbers right side of defense. but rather than lifting the side with his notable commitment, brunner looked abject and jaded. certainly it is true that carrying a 19-year-old rookie and jamaican prima donna is a burden not even the hulk could perform without some fatigue, but he looked flat even in his typical efforts at throwing himself into every challenge. this match saw the shake up of the timbers defensive line begin.

scoring against the philadelphia union in his first match for the timbers, baptiste had the type of debut often imagined and rarely realized. however, with that start developed some unrealistic expectations of a 19-year-old with limited experience. as often as fate provides moments of glory it also tames and humbles those bold enough to think they can reach beyond their abilities. and quickly the timbers lost the next three matches. while mags and i attributed those losses to the poor play of the flanking defenders, when it came to addressing the issues baptiste lost out to the more established players. the last match jean-baptiste played for the timbers until the final match against san jose was the embarrassing loss to chivas usa, where lovel palmer was continuously torched and tutored on the finer points of playing football by ryan smith. [side note: i remember the scolding baptiste took at the hands of thoroughly embarrassed lovel palmer, who had just been torched by ryan smith for the umpteenth time. it was that moment i grew to want lovel palmer as far away from the timbers as godly possible. though face palmer had 60 games under his belt by the time he threw the tantrum, the timber's first round draft pick had played only two seasons of ncaa soccer at the university of connecticut--i think facepalmer went overboard on eschewing the blame.] baptiste was subsequently dropped for hanyer mosquera against the galaxy and would eventually make a trip to the la blues for some further seasoning and game time.

his time with the blues seemed to work out well for him. his return was the final game against san jose, with a significant expectation to prevent chris wondolowski from breaking roy lasssiter's 16-year-old scoring record. maybe he is that fella who shows at big games, but whatever he was immense on that night. i recall writing this about his pairing with horst:

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.

a few weeks later, with further time to reflect on that match and enough time to remove any emotion i may have invested in that assessment, i still think the continued partnership merits an argument for consideration.

for a better part of this season the odd man out was futty danso. the most experienced central defender in the side, but also the most likely to commit a disastrous mistake. he started 9 matches this season, with the most notable matches of course being the 2-1 win against the filth from up north and the 5-0 hiding received from fc dallas, which effectively saw his playing time cease. and that should have been the case--that was as abject a display of football as i have seen in many years of watching football. coincidentally, the next time he was given a start a similar but more painful result occurred at the hands of the filth up north. as grateful as i am for his service to the side, i am not convinced he will be with the timbers for much longer. the gulf in talent between he and horst or mosquera, even jean-baptiste, is apparent. factor in that he turns 30 in april, the timbers are holding on to a player who will not improve any further than the efforts we saw this last season.

all right, i'm off to re-watch the beauty that was the north london derby. mags will be back tomorrow with some thoughts on our colombian centerhalf.

enjoy the day.

sunshine

Kosuke Kimura

Posted on: November 13th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 1 Comment

 

There are a lot of easy targets in defense for Portland, you’d have to say. I’m going to start with right back, mostly because that’s the one where most of the obvious trouble arose. The most persistent of the first few weeks of the season was repeated attacks toward the right side of our defense. For me, the goal that really sticks in memory is the one scored by Saer Sene in the first minute of our match away to the Revs on day three of the season. Although that was the only goal scored by either side that day, it emboldened the Revs to try the same thing time after time and, if memory serves, they managed to put in a fair amount of service from that side of the pitch.

In those days, the problem was pretty simply: Lovel Palmer. He is probably a good human being, but his outings at right back raised troubling questions about whether he has what it takes (questions that were not put to bed during the balance of the season). Palmer has two serious and interconnected problems as a right fullback. The first is that he is not very fast or, more precisely, that he isn’t quick. When confronted by attacking players who are, he flails. The second, intimately connected with the first, is that he is strongly disinclined to close people down. The combination is death for a fullback

There is a sense in which you don’t want to blame the guy. If he gets left for dead out on the flank then the other defenders are put under pressure to come across and cover, thus pulling the formation out of shape. Unfortunately, at this level of football it simply will not work to allow an attacker five or ten yards of space. The grim sight of opposing wings putting in training ground crosses time after time was one of the least appetizing features of Palmer’s tenure at right back. Things finally got so bad that they had to put Jewsbury there instead. This had roughly the same effect on our offensive efforts as green kryptonite does on Clark Kent. Jewsbury could at least do 50% of the things that he was supposed to do (i.e. he could defend) but he was never really going to get forward very much and it didn’t take long for opposing teams to figure it out.

This brings me to the real subject of this column: Kosuke Kimura. Kimura was brought in from Colorado in early July in an attempt to upgrade the position. It didn’t work. Well, not really anyway. Kimura is quicker by a mile than either Palmer or Jewsbury. He has lots of experience, most prominently having played the full 90 when the Rapids won the MLS Cup in 2010. He’s a guy who likes to get forward, and it’s pretty easy to see in the abstract why it was that the people running the show thought he would make a good addition. For a team that desperately needed speed and aggression on the flanks, Kimura should have been a tonic. He turned out to be snake oil.

Kimura liked to get forward as advertized, but his decision making when he did so was not the greatest. Moreover, although his previous stint with Colorado suggested that he was a decent crosser of the ball, this quality did not prove out in Portland. He also did not seem to interact particularly effectively with any of the midfield players on that side of the pitch, and this contributed to the Timbers’ frequent (and frequently harped on) inability to play the ball up the pitch.

These things were probably of the sort that could be lived with if it had not been for his defensive play, which barely merited the name. Unlike Palmer, he was willing to get close to opponents. But he too often and too easily got sucked inside, leaving him with far too much ground to cover to be in position to look to his responsibilities. This very often resulted in his barging into someone or getting beat due to his momentum carrying him into a play too fast. Even when he did stay in the proper zone, it was still all too often the case that he would bring down an opponent needlessly. Giving up free kicks in that particular part of the pitch put unnecessary pressure on our defense and really vitiated any positive effects that might have resulted from his offensive skills.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Kimura on the basis of his work for the team so far is that at least his presence allowed Jewsbury and Palmer to move to more natural positions (defensive central midfield and the bench respectively). People who read this column with frequency will probably know that I have an optimistic streak rivaling Candide’s, as my carrying of the torch for Boyd for months will certainly confirm. I fain to hope that, with a full training camp with the squad and a more consistent lineup across the back, Kimura can still make a positive contribution to this team. I would not, however, be averse to the idea of bringing in someone who could seriously compete with him for the job. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if they experimented with playing him in right midfield, both to give Alhassan some competition for playing time and because Kimura might be a better option in terms of adding some defensive stiffness when needed. In any case, this would be a matter of retrieving value otherwise lost. Ultimately, his play last season was not (or should not be) good enough to guarantee him a spot in the squad for the upcoming season. It remains to be seen whether the Timbers brains trust will have the nous to get this.

Ok, so much for that. I’ll be back tomorrow (much earlier in the day) with a piece on the Timbers’ own version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde: the enigma that is Steven Smith.

Magadh

hey rainmaker, come away from that rightback…

Posted on: November 12th, 2012 by theaxepdx@gmail.com 2 Comments

 

as the rain started yesterday afternoon i began to hum shawn ryder tunes as i began to ponder on the upcoming topic of rightback. i have a great love of late eighties/early nineties brit-pop and baggy music. so, it was propitious that while i was singing to myself i found the issues the timbers have at the position of right back can be summed up by some manchunian drug addict--it really twists my melon. it does not require you sit down and  discuss the timbers options at rightback with your nearest and dearest over a couple cups of your favorite liquid refreshment to determine that the men playing for the side have really stamped out the team's fire--the position is a deathtrap.

i am sure we all remember the classic moment from the sound bite that was john spencer when he stated that anyone could play right back. i know the revisionist historian in all of you wants to give more credit to spencer than is necessary (especially following the mired attempt at interim managing gavin put in), but that comment exposed two things about the pudgy scotsman: first, he was not a smart man. and second, well, who really cares so long as the first thing was relevant? seriously, he was dead wrong. if the lines of attack taken by most teams against the timbers this last season were not evidence enough of spencer's limited understanding of how to assemble a defense, the players he brought in to play right back certainly were.

through his tenure, spencer retained one and brought in two duds to fill the role. not one of the three could play the position and disproved spencer's theory every time they took the pitch. though we all know steve purdy is not the standard we should draw upon to describe the role of a right back, at different points in the season the management felt that both lovel palmer and kosuke kimura were.

while i would consider kimura over palmer every day of the week and sometimes on the following monday, he was not a player blessed with speed or the finest man-marking skills. when confronted with stronger, more agile players he was often left either tripping over them or himself. after sal zizzo took over the right wing duties from kalif, kimura was given more support on the flanks, which emboldened him to travel north of the halfline. for me, that line was a line of demarkation he should have never travelled beyond, because when he dared travel beyond the half-line bad things seemed to happen.

as for the guy whose starting position he usurped, i feel the less i say the better. but that is not how these things work. preparing an objective evaluation of palmer's skills will require some restraint of pen and tongue--i can find only salty words to describe the recollections i have of his play. over his tenure at the timbers he did everything he could to earn the nickname facepalmer. overall, his play was not exceptional and i doubt you would find a supporter who could argue for his return next season. if he was not firing a shot from 40 yards out that was shanked so poorly the corner flags had to be replaced on several occasions, he was giving ten yards of space to opposing attackers and wingers. in his defense, facepalmer was not a rightback--he was acquired to play right back. there is a difference. and that difference disproved the spencer theory of rightback relativity. as the time he put in on the flanks grew, i along with most everyone i knew or stood by in the northend began to beg for the return of jeremy hall. his presence was made even more unbearable when watching the mls playoffs i saw adam moffat launch a missile into sporting kc's net (a missile that would have lost its guidance system had palmer hit the ignition) to send houston to the mls eastern conference finals. exactly what spencer determined was attractive about bringing in both mike chabala and facepalmer for a player who is now a regular and productive starter for a side that challenges for silverware is well beyond my comprehension. but it happened and we were forced to suffer facepalmer ever since. while it could be argued that the collective opinion of lovel is clouded by the loss of a popular player, moffat was neither popular nor unpopular when at portland. facepalmer simple is an awful option at rightback.

oddly, the best rightback we had this year was our so-called defensive midfielder and captain. he began his career as a rightback and then migrated further up the pitch. but in a rare moment of mad genius brought on by the necessity of addressing the problems on the right and an injury to facepalmer, spencer employed his captain on the flank. jewsbury was not an adventurous rightback--he stuck at home, shepparded the flanks with something resembling aplomb, and supported the attack when needed. his play was not dynamic, but it was also not detrimental to the side. one worrying aspect of jack's play was the tendency to drift to his more natural position at central midfield. an understandable mistake, but one that could cause some blushes but thankfully did not. honestly, i wanted him to remain at rightback for the duration of this season--he is not a good defensive midfielder, but at rightback he did cut off most reasonable avenues for a leftside attack.

overall, this position caused the side and the supporters more consternation than any other. it was so clearly obvious that it was in need of an upgrade, but yet the management failed to really do anything about the issues. obviously, towards the end of the season it would have been pointless to make and improvement with caleb porter to join in mid-december. however, with the season already a wash it would have been nice to give someone like ryan kawulok some further minutes rather than showcase the big heart and limited talents of kimura. regardless, the players currently employed in the position are a loose fit at best and, in my opinion, should be told to step on.

alright, that is about all i have today. mags will be here for the next few days with some blag on specific players. happy monday...

sunshine