By Niall McCusker

One thing you can say about the Portland Timbers this season is that they usually play as a team. Sure a few great goals and major gaffes have made the difference in earning points on a few occasions, but normally they are all on a similar performance level.

When they are good, see the Dallas game, they are nearly all good. When they are bad, see Orlando and this game against Houston, they are almost all bad. When they are average and reasonably competitive, see every other game of the season, they all tend to put in an average shift.

People may point to the defense or Adi not living up to his DP price tag, but this game was lost in midfield. They don’t call it the ‘engine room’ for no reason – if it’s not working you are going nowhere.

Valeri and Nagbe had their moments but were largely nullified by Garrido and company. Jewsbury and even Diego Chara were non-factors and couldn’t help their defense stem the tide of fast Houston attacks from Beasley, Barnes, Clarke and Garcia. The runners were fed by some excellent balls from Davis who was kept well supplied from a myriad of Timber turn-overs.

Davis’ set-piece delivery was also excellent, though Bruin being completely unmarked certainly helped on their opener. Having somehow got themselves back on level terms, Portland, who have at times been quite good at patiently holding onto the ball, kept giving it to Houston who missed a couple of pretty easy headers before finally regaining the lead and killing the game with a third goal shortly thereafter.

The heat in Houston always offers an easy excuse for visiting teams, in fairness to Caleb Porter he did not push any of the blame for the defeat in this direction, but some may be wondering why he didn’t look to his bench until the 76th minute.

Here are the individual ratings:

Adam Larsen Kwarasey 6: The keeper was quick out of his box in the sixth minute to head clear a Davis through-ball to Bruin. He handled the crosses well and got down sharply to turn away Beasley’s first half shot. His defense bears the brunt of the blame for the third goal, but Kwarasey had the angle to see Bruin’s run and Borchers’ lack of response and could maybe have committed fully to an advance or stayed on his line instead of presenting himself to Bruin in a nice lobbable spot.

Alvas Powell 5 (off in 85′): Beasley’s third minute cross was a sign of things to come on that wing, he, Davis and Barnes all found some joy out there. Powell cut down Barnes to allow the free kick that opened the scoring and with no real right winger in front of him and Chara having an off-night, it continued to be a tough match for the young Jamaican.

Powell’s three crosses in the first half were all hit and hope and he also suffered that rare ignominy in the pro game of being called for a foul throw. I heard a coach shouting ‘keep your foot down Alvas’ when he was taking one earlier in the season, this might make that message stick.

Nat Borchers 5: British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ and so it is in football. The center-back was last week’s stand-out player and this week’s scapegoat (except he was actually to blame for two goals, unlike a scapegoat – for that see Fernandez, Gaston).

The MLS Live coverage, complete with an announcer who was making a strong early case for the ‘homer of the year’ award, didn’t really show a good replay of the first goal. But since Borchers was marking Bruin at every subsequent set-piece there is a strong circumstantial case that he should have been doing so at that one as well.

After that Borchers started to have a pretty good game, in the right place at the right time to clear out some crosses and aggressively attacking headers in the second half. Then came the third goal, where he didn’t check Bruin’s position before deciding the ball was going to run harmlessly to his goalkeeper.

An experienced defender arrived in Portland at the start of last season and looked pretty good, except for a few crucial mistakes here and there – Norberto Paparatto is now watching from the bench.

Liam Ridgewell 5.5: When you watch the Englishman’s game you don’t typically record much in the way of big defensive plays. People who have read books by over-educated, Anglo-Dutch journalists like Simon Kuper will tell you that’s because defenders who are consistently in the correct position don’t really end up having to actually do much.

Whatever – I am a man of simple (and perhaps borderline barbaric) tastes and would like my English DP center-backs to be engaging in crunching tackles and frequent heroics, preferably with blood streaming down their forehead in a Terry Butcher-esque fashion.

Ridgewell’s stretch to meet Beasley’s cross only enough to poke the ball into a dangerous spot that led to Houston’s second goal was not such a moment.

Jorge Villafana 5.5: Garcia occasionally probed his side of the defense for weakness, but most of the Dynamo’s (do Texan’s know this a pretty communist team name?) attacking was on the other side, so much like last week’s game it would have been good to see more in the way of attacking from Portland’s left flank. That said, their best move of the first half did end with a really nice cross from Villafana that just missed Wallace’s head.

Jack Jewsbury 5: The veteran tried to help cover Powell’s side early on, but to little effect. On the free kick that led to the opening goal, both he and Powell stood off Barnes and allowed him to split them and earn the foul. One player gets stuck in, the other picks up the scraps – easier said than done against one of the hottest players in the league right now.

When you’ve conceded a goal from one well delivered free kick from the left, the last thing you want a veteran leader doing is giving away another in exactly the same position a couple of minutes later, which is exactly what Jewsbury did, earning a caution in the process.

Porter has said he doesn’t normally substitute defensive midfielders, but when they are both on a yellow at half time and your team is lacking energy surely a glance was cast toward Fochive?

Diego Chara 5 (FIVE): Anyone who grew up watching football results coming in on a Saturday afternoon on BBC’s ‘Grandstand’ programme, remembers the videprinter. Final scores and late goals rolled in on a fairly basic digital ticker at the bottom of the screen, the flickering cursor and then the slow typing provoked massive levels of anticipation in viewers awaiting results.

On occasion when a very high or unusual scoreline would come up the numerals alone were not considered sufficient, as people would assume it was a typo – so alphabetic confirmation was required. Diego Chara scoring a 5 (FIVE) in player ratings is such an occasion.

Dribbling into trouble, slack passes and contributing to Portland’s turn-over count will get that low mark. Normally a beacon of light in even the darkest performance, Chara succumbed to the general malaise that surrounded the Timbers in this game.

Darlington Nagbe (off in 76′) 5.5: On re-watching the game Nagbe wasn’t as poor as it seemed live, when he looked to be constantly giving the ball away in bad places. At least he was trying to get things going and Houston’s midfield deserve credit for making that very difficult indeed for him. Still, just like Chara’s, those turnovers really hurt Portland, chasing counters in the heat is just not fun.

Diego Valeri (off in 84′) 6: The Argentine is another who gave the ball away a bit too often, though in his role risk-taking is acceptable. He had a nice flick and long pass to Adi in addition to his assist and the 80 minutes of effort here will have surely done wonders for his match fitness.

Even at his best Valeri is a vertical (South American for direct) player who will lose the ball twice for every one genius pass. So if the others think they can finally heave a sigh of relief and wait for him to win games for them, they will be sadly disappointed. Their effort and discipline will actually need to increase in order to accommodate him, especially in somewhat diminished condition.

Rodney Wallace 5: The left winger wasn’t really involved in the first half too much apart from a couple of decent tackles. He had one sneaky run onto a long ball from an onside position while the defense was busy watching Adi being passive in an offside position, the keeper just beat him to it.

In the second half a better cross from Wallace after he picked up an errant back pass would have seen Adi get his, formerly characteristic, brace – that ball just has to go between the last defender and the keeper to the far post.

Fanendo Adi 5.5: The Nigerian striker was well marshaled throughout by Taylor and Horst – his lack of hold-up play in the first half contributed to Portland’s poor effort. On thirty minutes he pulled the defense with him, coming out to play a give and go with Nagbe, who then released Villafana on the left. Then the defense was turned having to run back toward their own goal as the cross came in, resulting in Portland’s best chance of the first half. Some more of that kind of play was required but not forthcoming.

Took his goal well enough, but had a couple of one on ones with David Horst that he could have done better on.

Substitutes:

Dairon Asprilla (on in 76′) 5: He joined in the awful turnovers exhibition as soon he came on with a slow, cross-field ball that was easily picked off. However, he did swing in two very nice crosses after that. Perhaps would have been expected use his pace to get at Houston’s defense a little more.

Maxi Urruti (on in 84′): Sadly not on long enough to be rated. Those who watched Horst during his time at Portland know he can handle big guys like Adi very effectively – fast, energetic guys who can pull out into midfield like Urruti not so much. He should have been in earlier, instead he got to watch Houston kill the game with their third as he was handing his substitute slip to the fourth official.

Gaston Fernandez (on in 85′): On the field only for what, in these parts, is delightfully termed ‘garbage time’. Surely a move would best suit both parties at this point?

More Portland at Houston

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