Portland ties a game but feels like a loss: San Jose away recap
by Ryan Gates on Aug 6, 2011 10:31 PM PDT
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PrintQuick Recap:
The Portland Timbers scores first and against the run of play in the first half but gives up a goal in the second half to take 1 point from the San Jose Earthquakes on the road.
First Half:
By far the starting line-up for this game was the most unusual line-up the Timbers haves used all season. Lovel Palmer and James Marcelin started in the middle of the pitch with Jeremy Hall taking Palmer's spot in the back. The lack of creativity really showed in the middle of the pitch. Despite the lack of play-makers in the middle Portland continually attacked down the wings with Sal Zizzo and Darlington Nagbe.
More After the Jump
The attack down the wings occurred so few times because of the lack of ability to possess the ball for any amount of time. In fact the possession looked to be almost 80-20 in the first 20 mins of the game. Despite the huge disparity in possession Jeremy Hall hit a great through ball to Jorge Perlaza in the 23rd minute. Perlaza had no defender around him and found an equally wide open Kenny Cooper who calmly hit the ball into the back of the net.
The goal looked like it was a practice drill because of the lack of San Jose players around, the San Jose defenders seemed to think either Perlaza was offside or were so beat on the play the automatically gave up. One would think that getting the opening goal against a team that hasn't won in 9 games would be a spark for a team coming off a great win. Sadly that was not the case.
Portland seemed to go into a defensive shell for the rest of the half. Even when they won the ball back they either hit a bad pass or hit a long ball that was easily defended. The ball would then come right back into Portland's defensive third. Luckily San Jose looked like a team that had not won in 9 games and nothing really threatened Troy Perkins.
Second Half:
The second half was exactly like the first half with the exception of the fact that Portland didn't score. It was as if Portland thought they could ride out an early goal by just defending and without possession. Spencer even thought he could get away without making a sub to change the game until after San Jose scored.
San Jose's goal was another goal that should not have happened but was one that almost all felt was coming because of the play of Portland. Once the goal happened in the 67th minute Portland tried hard but couldn't make enough plays because a lack of a true central midfielder.
In the last minute of the game Portland had probably their best chance to score in the 90th minute as Lovel Palmer had his shot blocked (may have been a handball but there was no definitive replay angle) when he had an open goal. The resultant play cost Portland it's right back as Jeremy Hall received his second yellow for dissent (being over zealous in your disagreement with the ref), which was probably the worst call in a relatively good officiated game.
Your thoughts? Feelings? Venting? player ratings?
Observations:
- Cooper's play with Perlaza continues to improve as they really combined well at times tonight, but both were starved for service
- Mike Chabala and Darlington Nagbe are dangerous with their combinations
- Darlington Nagbe has slowly started to show his amazing skills. At one point tonight he dribbled around with 4 or 5 defenders on him and found the open player
- Chara and Jewsbury are huge keys to this team and the Timbers need at least one of them in there. With both out this team has no play-maker in the middle.
- Great to see Bright Dike but he still has mich to learn
- The only positive is that the Timbers are still the 7th place team and didn't lose to a team below them. Win at home and draw on the road as the saying goes (we should have won though)
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I liked Wednesday's Timbers better
I’ve seen tonight’s movie before, and it’s tedious. Again with the not getting the ball out of midfield, the defensive shakiness, and the overall “oh god I don’t know what I’m doing”-ness from a lot of people.
Cooper was great – the goal was huge for him – and sure, without Jewsbury this team will struggle a bit, but this was depressingly familiar. Still, didn’t lose too much ground thanks to Seattle’s win, but this definitely feels like two points lost instead of one point won.
A lot happier with Cooper tonight
The rest of the team, I’ll have to go along with pdb’s thoughts. Everything after the Timbers goal was quite boring and difficult to watch. What’s happened to Alhassan? He’s really regressed as the season has gone on. Bad game for him. The last few minutes of the game were pretty bad, especially when we took what looked like about 3 shots or so at the goal and were blocked on all of them, as well as Dike’s being tripped up in the box with no call and Hall getting that horrible yellow.
I’m fine with at least getting a point on the road. We have another home game against them, so hopefully we pick up 3 there. Onward Rose City!
Dike Tripped???
Do you honestly think that was a foul on Dike?
Bright had a heavy touch that got away from him and the defender made an excellent tackle to knock the ball away. If you think that was a foul then you must be the biggest homer this town has ever seen.
Let's not get carried away
There’s a lot of homers in this town, for one. And I was watching the game at a bar and several people made the comment about it looking like a foul, but it may have just been the heat of the moment combined with frustration.
Fair engough
You are right. There are a lot of homers in this town, who can see no fault in the Timbers play. They always boo and seem to blame the officials after a Timber’s loss. That always seems to make me laugh, but that play was certainly not a foul.
This game felt like a win
No Chara or Jewsbury so SJ’s dominant posession wasn’t a surprise. Hall back in at RB and we all knew that could be nervey but he did okay, helped set up the goal. Third game in eight days and it really showed because Timbers really didn’t play well tonight.
But they still got a road point. They didn’t fold after conceding a goal. Cooper finally scored. And that’s 5 points in their last 3 games. In their last 5 games they have 2 wins (including first road win) and 2 draws. Considering how poorly they were playing before the last 5 games, I’ll take that run. In the future I’ll want wins in games like tonight. But for now I’ll take the road point and move on.
Could have been worse
I know that the Timbers are really a better team than SJ but I’m not that disappointed with a draw. The T’s looked and played like a tired team. Three games in a week is a lot. They also had a very makeshift midfield and the makeshiftees, Marcelin and Palmer are both defensive minded they were lucky to have much offense at all. A week off and Chara and Captain Jack back will make a big difference. Coming into this game I was really worried about a loss.
Cooper played okay. He didn’t blow a pretty easy chance but I would still rather see Johnson in there. I’m afraid, though, that tonight will just give Spencer reason to keep running him out there.
I was really hoping we could pick up Flash Gordon but I also have very high hopes that Dike will develop into that kind of forward. It was good to see him out there tonight. Oh, and Brunner knows better than to wait for a ball but that was the play of a very tired player.
CraigM
Missing midfielders
I know Spencer doesn’t want to say it because he “wouldn’t put them out on the pitch if he didn’t think they were good enough to win” but Chara was sorely missed today. The Timbers were trounced in the midfield, so it’s no surprise that they managed a draw on a combination between a defender and the strikers.
To me Spencer made completely the wrong choice to pair Marcelin and Palmer together in the middle. Using Palmer — who’s been with the team for, what, a week and a half? — to coordinate our attack was just plain boneheaded on Spencer’s part. I would much rather have seen Nagbe given the center attacking role (with Alhassan or Hall replacing Nagbe on the wing). As it was, our best plays forward came from Horst, Chabala and Hall, but nearly all of them were snuffed out by an uncoordinated and unprepared midfield.
I agree with vitaminx that Nagbe, far from dragging, seemed to be peaking at the time of his substitution — would rather have seen Alhassan or Lowry in for Zizzo or Palmer, as the two of them seemed more gassed — especially evidenced by Palmer’s inability to run to a loose ball in front of the penalty area late in the game. (But I agree with kpot07: that was a clean challenge on Dike.)
Overall the Timbers played like a team trying to survive rather than trying to win, and they didn’t need to. Jon Busch was total crap in goal for San Jose — consistently lacking control on easy saves, and he should have challenged for Perlaza’s cross instead of watching Cooper’s strike from his own endline — and their defense looked desperate at times. The Timbers should have exploited those weaknesses, but for their missing midfielders.
I would agree with spencers decisions
I would have rather saw him start with nagby in the center. Especially since when we had our friendlies and he was in the middle he had some great games. And the first sub was not only way to late in teh game, but why nagby? he looked fine out there, if anything zizzo looked a bit tired on the other side. But personally i would have taken out marcalin. It was one of his worst games of the year. He gave the ball up way to easily. It seems when you ask him to just iwnt the ball and leave the transition to chara or jewsbury he does far better, but when he was responsible to help attack he was a mess.
re "we should have won though"
Forgetting Cronin hit the crossbar in the 61st minute are we?
Win or lose, we'll always be there for you.
by johnjahafanclub on Aug 7, 2011 10:45 PM PDT reply actions
Think he was meaning its a game we should have won based on the team we were playing.
personally in my opinion SJ should have won that game after we played it. But going into the game its one that the Timbers should have won. They played horrible, and having the center mids gone really made the difference
Yes
Meant we should have won going into it, look at what San Jose did against us without our starting CM’s and with Hall as a Right Back (he is a right midfielder).
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
That I agree with!
I believe after Chivas’ two newest acquisitions that SJ now has the lowest payroll in the league… we have some good players but so many of the starters are hurt that we are pretty worthless right now… no Lenhart, Dawkins, Opara.
Win or lose, we'll always be there for you.
by johnjahafanclub on Aug 8, 2011 8:17 AM PDT up reply actions
And the possibility
of losing Gordon is not good for you guys
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Yup
a target forward is mandatory in yallop’s 4-4-2 longball system. without lenhart and gordon we have no one to play this role and we are pretty screwed.
Win or lose, we'll always be there for you.
by johnjahafanclub on Aug 8, 2011 10:49 PM PDT up reply actions
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