Q and A with Paulson

Here's an excerpt from the Times article on their soccer page. It's been a wonderful opening week, hope we can keep this up through the rest of the season! Enjoy

Q.

How do you follow up an inaugural season in M.L.S. like the Timbers had last year?

A.

One way is we go out and get a guy like Kris Boyd [who scored a goal Monday night]. It was a strange deal, quite unusual in that it happened very quickly. How it works in the single entity with M.L.S. is that Houston had discovery rights on Kris. He’s 28, not old by any means. He has the most goals all-time in the Scottish Premier League with Rangers, but had gone to Turkey for huge money. The team was unable to pay him, which is kind of ironic when you look at the position Rangers are in right now. It think he played in only two games last season, a waste. He didn’t want to sign with Houston due to the weather, that’s my understanding. He was probably going to go to Liverpool. The transfer window was closing and we had a short time to get the rights from Houston and do a deal with Kris. It was a week-long sprint. [Timbers Coach John] Spencer is the brother-in-law of Billy Davies, who coached Nottingham Forest and had coached the guy. John knew Kris had played for Billy. And when we were doing our due diligence, we decided is this a guy we want to put out big money for. We didn’t need to scout the guy that much. It was about character and leadership.