—by Chris Rifer

The Portland Timbers have played seven hours and seven minutes of soccer since its offense scored a goal. On the calendar, it’s been more than a month.[1] And folks, Chance Myers is not walking through that door.

By any objective measure, a road draw at Houston is a perfectly respectable result. But when the point comes in the midst of a remarkable display of impotence from the offense and a match as tedious as Tuesday’s, it’s hard to find the positives.

The Timbers controlled much of the first half, but again failed to create anything truly dangerous from it. A Lovel Palmer strike from distance found the frame, but did little more than let Dynamo keeper Tally Hall touch the ball.

Time and again the Timbers’ strikeforce failed to present its wide players— namely Franck Songo’o—with viable options, and when they did find themselves in a dangerous position, they were offside.

As toothless as Portland looked up front, the Dynamo didn’t look substantially better.  Brad Davis pulled a 41^st minute shot well wide, and Macoumba Kandji’s 45^th minute shot from distance was right at Troy Perkins, but Houston never really caused the Timbers’ plastic man any trouble.

In the second half, the Dynamo—playing their third MLS match in seven days—began to shift to their front foot. Davis’ 54^th minute free kick from 25 yards sailed just wide of the near post.  Luiz Camargo found Mac Kandji in the box in the 58^th minute, but the former Rapid’s effort to turn and shoot skied well over the bar.

For the first hour Portland was lucky Houston couldn’t find the mark. For the final half hour Portland was lucky Troy Perkins is reemerging as one of the better goalkeepers in the MLS.

In the 67^th minute, Calen Carr found Camargo in a seam the size of the Gulf of Mexico in the Portland defense, but Perkins was very quick off his line to keep the Brazilian from turning toward goal.

The Timbers best chance of the second half came in the 69^th minute when 2012 debutante Sal Zizzo beat his man to the byline and found Darlington Nagbe 10 yards out. Nagbe’s shot, however, was blocked by Jermaine Taylor, appeared to take an incidental deflection off the Jamaican’s hand,[2] and was cleared away.

From there, it was one-way traffic in Perkins’ direction. In the 78^th minute Colin Clark turned the ball in a dangerous spot on the left wing, but shot right at Perkins. Four minutes later Carr settled on a deflected ball with nothing but green in front of him on the wing, but Futty got a toe on the ball and a body on Carr to end the danger in controversial fashion.

Try as they might, though, Houston couldn’t find the finishing touch either. In the 90^th minute Carr found space on the wing against a lame Futty, and picked out Brian Ching in the box, but Ching’s touch sailed embarrassingly off target. The Timbers weren’t out of the woods yet, though, as two minutes later young midfielder Alex Dixon took a go from the left wing, but, after an initial bobble, Perkins smothered the chance.

To be sure, the point in Houston is plenty satisfactory for a Timbers team that has struggled to earn results away from home. Nonetheless, the performance fell far short of inspiring confidence in the Timbers’ offense and setting the club back on track.

Match Observations

• If we’re always looking on the bright side of life, we should start out here with the play of the defense. Until Futty got hurt in the late stages, the defense was stellar; limiting Houston to a pretty meager helping of half chances.
• The offense, however, is completely disjointed. The reasons for this are numerous, but I’ll only address one here. The central attacking players are doing a very, very poor job of making runs and presenting targets. On Tuesday, the Timbers actually got some fairly handy play from the right wing tandem of Franck Songo’o and Sal Zizzo, but every time one of those guys turned to send a cross in or find somebody making a run into the box, they saw green grass and orange shirts. Kris Boyd couldn’t have been more anonymous. Darlington Nagbe wants to track back into the midfield to receive the ball, and seems allergic to work off of it. Diego Chara—well—Diego Chara couldn’t present a target to save his life, but that’s not really his fault.
• The solution, however, isn’t obvious. Some have called for Fucito or Perlaza up front with Nagbe at the top of a midfield diamond. This would be impossible with Diego Chara also manning the center of the pitch, and, considering he was the best Timber not wearing a mask on Tuesday, it would be unwise to move him. A central midfield of Nagbe and Chara—to say nothing of Fucito playing as a second striker—would be prohibitively vertically challenged. The only thing I can think of would be to replace Lovel Palmer with Eric Alexander in the center of the midfield, and let Diego sit back a little bit more. Alexander did play in the center with Dallas, but really hasn’t done much in his two relatively brief stints the past two weeks to change John Spencer’s mind about his spot on the bench.
• The Timbers are a mess on set pieces. Like, embarrassingly so.
• How is Kalif’s knee?

Timbers Grades

Troy Perkins, 7.5 Didn’t have much to do until the final half hour, but then the Dynamo poured on the pressure. Troy was up to the task and then some, making several crucial saves look routine.

Steven Smith, 5.5 Nice day defensively and sent some useful crosses and set pieces into the box. A few giveaways in the midfield, though, temper his rating a little bit.

Futty, 6.5 A really nice day from Futty until he got hurt. The knee injury didn’t look good, however, so Sunday could see changes on the backline…again.

Hanyer Mosquera, 6 Not Mosco’s best day in back, but still more than adequate. Has a tendency to get caught on the wrong side of his attacker from time to time, but does a great job of recovering, steering his man toward a post, and cutting off the angle from which to score.

Jack Jewsbury, 5.5 Lost Brad Davis once on the right flank, but otherwise had a competent first half before coming out. Also showed some good quality sending crosses in. If his hip injury isn’t too bad, this experiment at right back might actually work.

Rodney Wallace, 3 The only thing he was effective at on the wing was being called offside. If Rod wants to play in an attacking position, he needs to learn to not kill the attack like that.

Lovel Palmer, 3.5 Wasteful going forward, barely passable defensively. Diego Chara was doing a lot of work, and that was primarily because Palmer was doing very little. Seeing him wearing the armband coming out of halftime was downright chilling. What, oh what has he done to earn John Spencer’s favor?

Diego Chara, 6.5 Was the best player on the field for the first hour. Very good defensively and one of the Timbers’ few effective players going forward. Did a lot of running, though, so ran out of gas a little bit as the second half wore on. That’s when it showed how important he is to this team.

Franck Songo’o, 6 Until he came out, Franck was by far the Timbers’ most dangerous player in the attack. Not that he didn’t get dispossessed a time or two, but Songo’o was really the only player finding space and looking to put the ball in dangerous areas even if those areas were manned exclusively by Houston.

Darlington Nagbe, 4 This might be generous. Couldn’t help himself but take touches. Dribbled himself into nothing and when Zizzo found him in the box with space Darlington decided to take two touches rather than get a shot off.

Kris Boyd, 2 Not only did he not score, but despite teammate(s) looking for him all day, Boyd wasn’t making himself available. His former supporters said there would be games where we would want to call him lazy and anonymous. Yep.

Mike Chabala, 5 Decent effort from Chewy coming in at right back for the injured Captain Jack. Despite Houston being uniquely suited to do so, for the first time this season a team didn’t seem determined to exploit the Timbers’ right flank. That’s a testament to the competence Jack and Chewy brought to the position last night.

Sal Zizzo, 6.5 The Timbers’ best player in the attack after he came on. Great to see him back in his first game since he was injured against the Dynamo last fall.

Eric Alexander, 5 Had one nice shot from distance that caused Tally Hall a little trouble, but was otherwise lost in the late Dynamo flood.

Preseason Prediction – Dynamo 1, Timbers 0. Will Bruin.

Actual Result – Dynamo 0, Timbers 0. Again.

Onward, Rose City!