The Timbers Army has strong opinions about Gavin Wilkinson. #GWOut is not a fringe movement in the Army, and Wilkinson has few defenders on the various forums and social media feeds. But even so, the conversation about him has been remarkably fractured.

Much of the case against him, (and the few brave arguments for him) has been built on the back of anecdotes, a kind of generalized institutional understanding. "Yup, that's what Gavin Wilkinson does," you'll hear grizzled TA members mention every now and then. But a lot of this is based on singular anecdotes, hearsay, and well-deserved animosity.

These rumors have been given a fair bit of weight if only because there's little public insight into how the front office operates. Other managers tell stories about how they acquired their players: "We were at a tournament in Central Africa," they'll say, "and this kid dribbled the ball across the surface of the ocean, then killed a wolverine by kicking the ball at it." Timbers signings appear blinking and somewhat confused in front of a small podium somewhere in the Peregrine LLC offices, like rabbits from a wildlife rehab center suddenly released back into the wild. It is up to journalists and fans to fill in the details about what happened between their playing in a game in Columbia, and in renting a luxury condo in Lake Oswego. ("There was a bright flash of light," says the translator, "and when again I opened my eyes, I was standing in front of an artisan cheese shop, and a woman in a Lexus hybrid was eyeing me with great suspicion...")

This secrecy, combined with the animosity between Wilkinson and the Timbers Army, have led to a shadow narrative, where every successful Wilkinson move was performed by happenstance or even by someone else entirely, while all of the failures were Wilkinson's alone.

And yet, the truth is that the Timbers' front office moves haven't been awful. Uneven, perhaps, average, sure. But awful? The Chivas USA FO was awful. The Chicago Fire FO is awful. The Philadelphia Union and their 101 goalkeepers are awful. Gavin Wilkinson is something else, and I'd like to try and figure out exactly what that is by laying out his moves, one by one, from the inception of his MLS career up to present day. Hopefully, at the end of this process, I'll be able to point to tendencies in player acquisitions and maybe even some deeper trends.

What I'm really interested in is whether Wilkinson, and the Timbers FO in general, are learning from their mistakes, and what that might portend for the future.

Pt. I: R-O-C-K in the USL

It's a little disingenuous to talk about Wilkinson's time as an MLS GM without considering his time in the USL. It's also difficult, as management of a USL team is far different than managing an MLS team. I'm not the person to do a full-on USL review. I didn't go to many USL games, and I don't have a great sense of the history much beyond the last season or two. So since this is a review of Wilkinson's MLS tenure, perhaps it's more useful to look at the products of his time in the USL: who was brought up from the USL team, and how successful they were in MLS.

The Timbers signed 10 players from their USL days:

Ryan Pore (MF/USL club legend),

Steve Cronin (GK)

Bright Dike (ST)

Futty Danso (CB)

Kalif Alhassan (MF)

James Marcelin (MF)

Rodrigo Lopez (MF)

Kevin Goldthwaite (CB)

Freddy Braun (MF/Academy)

Jake Gleason (GK/Academy).

The team also signed (English) Eddie Johnson, a forward from the USL Austin Aztex.

Without context, it's a bit difficult to make an assessment of these players, which is why I like to compare Vancouver's and Montreal's rosters when evaluating Wilkinson's success here.

Vancouver 2011:

Jay Nolly-GK

Brian Sylvestre-GK

Alain Rochat-CB

Phillippe Davies-MF

Nizir Khalfan-MF

Davide Chiumiento-MF

Alexandre Morfaw-MF

Gershon Koffie-MF

Russell Teibert-MF

Montreal 2011:

Evan Bush-GK

Hassoun Camara-CB

Karl Ouimette-CB

Siniša Ubiparipović-MF

Eduardo Sabrango-ST

When looking at these lists, what first stands out is Vancouver's relative success compared to Portland or Montreal. Koffie and Teibert are valuable players today, and Rochat and Chiumiento would still be starting in MLS if they were inclined to do so. In comparison, Montreal is only regularly starting one of their USL players, with Ouimette still filling in as a developmental type. Evan Bush is supposedly their goalkeeper of the future, but has looked average-at-best in limited appearances.

The Timbers did much worse than their Cascadian-Canadian brethren, as none of their USL players have regular starting roles with the Timbers, or with any other first division team. Alhassan is a heavy favorite to be cut entirely this year, leaving the lone USL veteran as Jake Gleeson, a 24 year old backup goalkeeper who has never made it through a season of professional soccer without sustaining a moderate-to-serious injury in limited appearances. The closest thing the 2010 USL Timbers have to a regular contributor is Stephen Keel, who the Timbers couldn't hang on to before they made the trip up to MLS.

The caveat here is that while the Timbers didn't have much lasting success from their USL team, they did have a number of solid contributors, and lost more than a few of those players to injury. For a few months, Bright Dike looked briefly like some alternate future of American soccer: a forward with the body of an NFL linebacker who simply ran right through defenses and powered the ball into the goal. Kalif Alhassan has had some important goals for the Timbers, but has never managed the kind of consistency necessary to win a starting position or even consistent playing time. And Futty was a solid defensive backup until his trade to Montreal for salary cap purposes.

Still, for a team that viewed the 2010 USL season as something of a tryout for MLS, this was a remarkably poor haul. Any time you find yourself saying, "We did about as well as the Montreal Impact," then something's gone terribly wrong. And if you even begin to consider Seattle's utilization of USL talent, then Wilkinson comes off even worse.

What went wrong?

We'll skip the "What went right" section, because honestly, there's not much there that doesn't involve New Zealand's U20 team.

If you look at Vancouver's 2010 graduates, you see a lot of guys with pedigree. Chiumiento and Rochat were national team players for their respective countries, and Russell Teibert was a highly promising local kid who had been brought up through the Whitecaps youth system. Most of these signings were from fairly significant teams, teams you've probably heard of before.

In contrast, the Timbers cycled through a lot of long shots. Guys like Ibad Muhammadu, signed from the Belgian Second League, players signed from teams in Singapore, etc. The philosophy seemed to be that if just one of these guys paid off in a big way, it would be worth all of the mediocre players that passed through PGE Park in 2010. It was the equivalent of Wilkinson playing a single number in roulette over and over again, confident that it would eventually pay off. In the end, none of them amounted to much of anything, and Wilkinson went home with little more than a comped meal and some free drinks.

The evidence would suggest that this was a poor strategy, however I'm inclined to think that this roulette philosophy was not as flawed as the fundamentals underpinning it. The 2010 Timbers did not have a dedicated scout or technical director. Wilkinson functioned as both head coach and scout, limiting his effectiveness in both roles.

Furthermore, no one on staff had any significant experience in MLS, or really in first division soccer. Amos Magee had a few loan stints to MLS during it's darkest days, and Wilkinson had played some international soccer (in the Oceanic Division, which, at the time meant he played against Australia and a number of impoverished rec teams. Modern New Zealand teams have seen great improvements in their record caused in large part by no longer having to play Australia). John Spencer was surely providing input during the last months of the season, but by that point a lot of evaluation time was already gone by.

It's not entirely clear exactly how scouting was done during this period, or even how scouting is currently done. Timbers fans with long associations with the team or mysterious inside sources will sometimes talk about a shadowy old boys network. But we're trying to get away from rumor and innuendo here. Whatever the structure of the Timbers scouting department in those embryonic days, it was clearly not very effective, and did not appear to utilize specifically-tasked personnel. Furthermore, without the prodigal MLS head coach installed at the beginning of the season, then there's no framework for what the team will look like, what sort of players the coach will need, or what skill sets should be prioritized. Up until around July, Wilkinson was building the team on a foundation of guesses.

The Timbers also failed to set up a real development academy until they were a year or two into the first division. (Gleason and Braun may have been signed as "academy" players, but it was more of a legal distinction than anything. Braun is from Michigan, and was actually a part of the 2010 2009 Superdraft, and Gleason wasn't seen on Glisan until well after he had developed into a decent goalkeeper).

Where Vancouver and Montreal brought in several very promising young players, the Timbers conversely missed out on several highly talented locals: Erik Hurtado and Rubio Rubin. Both players left school early, and Hurtado might have been considered a homegrown player had Portland taken steps to initiate an academy system just a little earlier. Rubin's a bit of a different case, but if the Timbers had set up a little bit of basic infrastructure, it's possibly they would have had some options there as well. It's a little more difficult to criticize the Timbers on this point, as a lot of established MLS teams didn't have academies at this point in time, and the MLS future was still somewhat up in the air. Still, missing out on just one Erik Hurtado cost the team pretty heavily, and that's assuming that there aren't any other Portland natives out there who suddenly blow up into highly desirable professionals.

In Part II: John Spencer, the expansion draft, and the Timbers' MLS baby steps.