Portland Timbers Sign Bryan Little; Roster almost set

By: Bob Kellett | April 16th, 2008

The newest member of the Portland Timbers is officially Bryan Little. A Scotsman with an accent that I’ve been told is thicker than mud, Little went to New Zealand on a working holiday and ended up playing professional soccer there for nearly six years. His most recent stint was with Auckland City FC, a team that qualified for the Club World Championship in Japan in 2006. Their opponent was a little club called Barcelona. Little apparently moonlights as an electrician, which will come in handy during the annual Power Outage Game at PGE Park.

Little’s signing brings the official roster to 22 players. Tom Taylor is also a done deal, just not officially. The final spot will likely go to a third keeper and for argument’s sake let’s just assume it is Steve Reese. So, now that the dust has settled and the way too long offseason has come to an end, let’s take a look at the Timbers transactions.

As you can see from the list below, the 2008 Timbers are returning a solid core of players. In a league where teams usually have tremendous player turnover, the Timbers are bringing back more than half their team. Of the ten new players, five are coming from leagues that are classified as being “above” USL First Division. And of the 11 players who are not back, only three have been definitively picked up by other teams. In other words, we’ve lost a number of role players (Wicks and Jordan excluded) and picked up a number of players who on paper have better pedigrees.

All in all I would say this offseason has played out almost exactly like Gavin Wilkinson would have wanted it. He has built a team that returns a strong backline, a good work ethic and that has more talent up front. It probably isn’t as two-deep as he says publicly, but there is enough depth to get by in this league.

Returning players (14)
Scot Thompson
Leonard Griffin
Cameron Knowles
Justin Thompson
Tom Poltl
Neil Dombrowski
Kiki Lara
Andrew Gregor
Troy Ready
Lawrence Olum
Shaun Higgins
Chris Bagley
Steve Reese*
Tom Taylor*

New Players (10)
Bryan Little (Auckland City FC)
Ray Burse (FC Dallas)
Jordan James (Houston Dynamo Reserves)
Tim Karalexis (Charleston Battery)
Scott Bolkan (Stanford University)
Vardan Adzemian (Ventura County)
Miguel Guante (Miami FC)
Arsene Oka (New England Revolution)
Takayuki Suzuki (Yokohama F. Marinos)
Chris Brown (Real Salt Lake)

Departing Players (11)
Luke Kreamalmeyer (Rochester)
David Hague (Unknown)
Lee Morrison (Unknown)
Garrett Marcum (Unknown)
Bayard Elfvin (Unknown)
Bryan Jordan (LA Galaxy)
Josh Wicks (LA Galaxy)
Kevin Meissner (Unknown)
Luc Harrington (Unknown)
Jaime Ambriz (Unknown)
Matt Taylor (Unknown)