Timbers pick up a split on the road

By: Bob Kellett | June 29th, 2008

Raise your hand if you thought the Portland Timbers season was pretty much over after Friday’s 1-0 loss against the Carolina RailHawks. Both my hands are raised. I’m typing this with my nose.

After a long break the Timbers pretty much played like they did during the first half of the season: they sucked. They couldn’t maintain possession, they hardly generated an attack, they were boring as hell, if not horrific, to watch, and they gave up a goal through a breakdown in the backline’s communication. They were slow, uncreative and uninteresting. They looked like a team that had won one game since April 26. The loss was their sixth in their last eight league games. They failed to score a goal for the seventh time this season. Their coach didn’t have any answers, their starting keeper had his bags packed for Dallas, and to top it all off they had a game the next night in Atlanta — a game that would be played after an overnight bus ride from North Carolina that would see the team arrive at their hotel at 6am. They were staring directly in the face of another loss, a loss that would have dropped them two games under .500 and would have seen them leapfrogged in the table by Atlanta. With everyone in the league having games in hand, a slide down the table appeared inevitable.

And then they played in Atlanta on a muggy evening after that overnight bus ride. They played a game in which their opponent had 15 shots and they had four. They played a game in which they had zero shots on goal. Try going 90 minutes without getting at least one shot. That is impressively dismal. They played a game in which their back four, which has played together for a year and half, looked like they met each other for the first time five minutes before kickoff. Scot meet Justin. Leo meet Cameron. They played a game in which they gave up a penalty shot. A game where that starting keeper with his bags already packed made five big saves, including a diving save on said penalty kick. They played a game where Chris Bagley, who has not scored against any other team in the USL First Division while in a Portland Timbers uniform, somehow managed to hustle his way into scoring his third goal against Atlanta. It was a game where they scored two goals against the Silverbacks for the second time this season. They have scored 10 goals combined in the other 14 league games. It was a game with the same lack of possession, the same boot and chase, the same lack of creativity, and the same glaring problems that had led to those six losses in eight games.

The only difference is that they won.

And by winning you can put your hands down because the season is not over. Three surprising points on the road are enough to gloss over the myriad challenges that lie ahead. The Timbers are a pig wearing lipstick and at least for today we can let that pig live and see how it goes forward in a league full of pigs — a league where mediocrity is the norm this year and the top team is separated from the bottom team by a mere 13 points.

One last thought to consider as we cling onto the hope that our heroes can still find a way to deliver the goods in the end. The Timbers have five wins this season. Lawrence Olum has been in the starting lineup in three of those five wins. Olum has started four games in total. The Timbers have not lost any of those four games. They are 2-5-5 in game he hasn’t started. Is he the magic bullet? Let’s just grasp onto this theory until proven otherwise.