Portland Timbers Man of the Match: Throwing Numbers Forward [Now with a Poll!]

UPDATE: The poll is now live. My bad.

The Portland Timbers got off to a horrible start against FC Dallas yesterday, but managed to stumble their way into two goals thanks largely to Dallas' complete implosion in the second half. The score may have ended at 2-2, but the single point was discouraging as the Timbers' defense remains a shambles.

Despite all that, we have still come together to give our picks for the Timbers Man of the Match. It was not easy, but we made our picks, so feel free to share yours by voting in the poll below and giving us the reasons by in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Kelly: Danny O'Rourke

There was always going to be less for the defense to do in the second half with the attack trying to find goals, but at least McKenzie wasn't in the game anymore.

Michael: Gaston Fernandez

Replaced the completely useless Steve Zakuani and was involved in a number of the second half scoring chances. This is obviously written with the understanding that FC Dallas was not playing soccer and the Timbers were throwing numbers forward, so of course an attacker would have a lot of action late in the game. Still, he didn't waste as many chances as Adi.

Stacey: Darlington Nagbe

Even the offense made a ton of mistakes last night, wasting chances by getting overly fancy, but Nagbe didn't make me too crazy. He gave the Dallas defense issues even if he didn't manage to get back to his old ways of scoring lots of goals against them.

Kevin: Fanendo Adi

It is difficult to give anyone a MOTM pick since it took two Dallas red cards and a PK in order for us to salvage a point. So this is more of a pick of attrition than anything else. Going down the list and marking off names who are not MOTM material for me leaves me with only three players: Valeri, Nagbe, and Adi. And I'm going to give it to Fanendo Adi by a hair over Nagbe and Valeri. I was impressed with his hold up play and how strong he truly he is. One play that stuck out to me was when one of the Dallas players was bear hugging him but he just kept backing up and holding the ball and that Dallas player couldn't do anything to get it back. Granted he wasted his share of chances, but so did the rest of the offense. Adi did get the PK called in our favor, which may have been soft, but how many times has that exact same thing been called against us this season? And that PK call seemed to start Dallas on their downward path towards implosion.

Who was your pick for the Timbers' Man of the Match? Vote in the poll below and let us know why in the comments.