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Interesting to watch the NYRB game a day later....


As my monikor implies, I'm the father of a soccer player. She's playing college soccer now and I miss a lot of the fall Timbers games while I follow her around like a groupie. So I ended up finally watching the NYRB game on Monday night...

So I'm a little backward this time... I read a ton of anguish on twitter and Stumptown BEFORE I saw the game.

My perspective on the whole thing is that it's really a pretty familiar pattern. This game reminded me A TON of the Houston game in that...

1) I think the team underestimated them.... expected them to be tired and soft and they weren't.

2) We gave up two soft goals just before halftime.

3) We missed 2-3 clear goal scoring opportunities in the H1 that would probably have changed the game. Urutti had a clear chance with a header and Borchers found one at his feet while open in the box. Score one or both of those and it's a different game.

And then the similarity with the Houston game stops. The Red Bulls weren't soft in the H2 and the Timbers couldn't break through.

My point is... this game really wasn't that different than the last few. The Timbers are reasonably good at defense BUT they switch off occasionally (Houston, NYRB) AND they can be beaten by serious offensive talent ne Martins/Seattle. Beyond that the story of the season is the lack of ability to punch the ball in.

I have no fricken idea how you fix that at this point in the season... I understand why CP started Urutti even though it didn't work well.

I DON'T understand:

1) The lack of communication between Chara and Johson. As a specific instance, the Felipe goal.... I hope someone smarter than me does an analysis of it. But to me, Nagbe, Chara, Johnson, and Kwarasay all make mistakes.

2) Nagbe and Powell (at least) had pretty bad games. Powell was immature and Nagbe was invisible. I'm actually a fan of both, but I'd probably bench Nagbe for a game at this point. Powell will most likely get a yellow pretty quick and bench himself.

3) At a macro level, NYRB came out with more desire than Portland. Somewhat hard to believe, definitely hard to stomach.

Where does that leave us? I really don't care very much if we make the 6th seed. "making the playoffs" is not the measure of success that I think is appropriate for this club. Is it better than not making the playoffs, sure. But this is a club than enjoys top 4 support by nearly every measurable and that's what I expect on the field.

And now you hit the interesting question... what do you do about the lack of success?

Would I fire GW... probably not, but I would reduce his scope and hire his equivalent for the thorns. My message would be... not good enough, show me you're better than this.

Would I fire CP... no. But after the season is over I would ask him to do an introspective report card on his performance this year. And I'd drag him through the process until he got to the point that he could specify areas that he/the coaching staff have to be better. My personal hot button is this: who's on the Timbers coaching staff/team that can mentor finishing? We don't have a world class finisher anywhere in the system. Having invested $xm in Melano et al, that seems crazy.

This FanPost was written by a Stumptown Footy community member and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the site or its staff.

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