After a highly controversial ending in Frisco last weekend, the Portland Timbers — now winless in five — will be in central Ohio on Saturday, looking to snap their losing streak against a Columbus Crew team led by a familiar face: former manager Caleb Porter (4:30 p.m., TV on KPDX).
The Opposition
At this time last year, it seemed as if the Columbus Crew wouldn’t exist in 2019. But the Crew survived former owner Anthony Precourt’s attempt to move them to Austin, and, with a new braintrust in Porter and GM Tim Bezbetchenko, have a new lease on life.
With that new lease, the Crew have picked up this year where they left off under former manager Gregg Berhalter. They are currently placed second in the Eastern Conference, averaging just a shade under two points per game. They’ve won four of their first seven matches, including three of four at home, with those three wins all coming by shutout.
If there is one reason for concern, it’d be the team’s attacking production. The Crew have scored just seven goals — giving them the second-worst goals-per-game average of any team in the Eastern Conference — and their expected goals number doesn’t suggest that they’ve simply been missing high-quality chances.
Porter has thus far mainly kept Berhalter’s system and personnel intact, but he’ll be chewing over how to get his offense humming. A high-impact acquisition in the summer would help; until then, it’s up to the current group.
The Tactics
Columbus, for the last five years under Berhalter and the first month-and-a-half of this campaign under Porter, have played a 4-2-3-1 in which the two fullbacks get forward, the wingers see the ball in high-impact areas, and the center forward ideally gets a lot of chances.
Gyasi Zardes was the beneficiary of those chances last year, before him it was Ola Kamara, and before that it was Kei Kamara. Whether the Crew this year have the wingers to get Zardes to 19 goals, his total from last year, remains to be seen.
The Timbers, meanwhile, likely have a new formation: the 5-3-2, which they’ve now used in their two most competent performances of the season — the 2-1 loss at LA at the end of March, and the 2-1 loss to Dallas last weekend.
As negative as the Timbers were through the first 70 minutes in Frisco, and as sloppy as they were on the ball, their shape was significantly improved from the meltdown at San Jose the weekend before. At this point, considering the team’s form, that’s not nothing.
The Lineup
1 – Attinella
16 – Valentin
18 – Cascante
33 – Mabiala
25 – Tuiloma
2 – Moriera
22 – Paredes
21 – Chara
10 – Blanco
8 – Valeri (C)
17 – Ebobisse
— It was good to see Cristhian Paredes get back into the lineup last weekend, and great to see him get on the scoresheet. He should get a run of games now.
— Assuming Diego Valeri is fit to return to the starting lineup, Andres Flores is the obvious candidate to drop to the bench.
— For now, it looks like Jorge Villafaña is second choice behind Zarek Valentin — a right-footer — at left back. Safe to say it’s not exactly what the Timbers had in mind when they reacquired Villafaña last summer.
The Memory
The first game that Caleb Porter managed for the Timbers against the Crew was nearly six years ago, at MAPFRE Stadium, and it got wild early.
The Pick
The losing streak isn’t going to continue forever, and, facing Porter, in a workable formation, the Timbers will get out of Columbus with a 1-1 draw.
