By Niall McCusker

The Portland Timbers started the same eleven that had produced an excellent win in Columbus, while Kansas rested a lot of their top talent following a mid-week victory in the US Open Cup* final. So the stage looked set for a vital home win, but as has often been the case this season, the Timbers followed an encouraging win with a major let-down.

This wasn’t an especially poor performance, but there are only so many times you can be unlucky without acknowledging the need to have a think about systemic issues that might be preventing the team from scoring goals. The home side had some decent chances but no one would have been surprised if the teams had played out their third 0-0 of the season.

The introduction of Zusi at halftime had added some semblance of life to the Kansas attack, but with their midfield regularly giving the ball to Portland they should have made to pay long before Nemeth’s strike. The Timbers pushed hard to salvage a point, but continued to miss their chances.

Here are the individual ratings:

Adam Larsen Kwarasey 5.5: The keeper was not called into serious action until Lopez’s shot in the 72nd minute. It is hard to know if he could have got a hand to the goal without a better angle on the replay, either way the defense deserves more blame for allowing Nemeth to waltz past them. The Hungarian striker must have felt like Friday’s game against the Faroe Islands had been moved up as he made Portland look like part-timers.

Alvas Powell 5.5: The Jamaican worked quite hard and had a reasonable game, but could perhaps have got into the attack a little more given the visitors lack of attacking ambition. At this point of the season an attacking right back needs to be sitting on more than one assist.

Liam Ridgewell 5: On the positive side the Englishman’s passing was excellent in this game, well aimed long-balls to Adi and Valeri helped Portland’s attack throughout the game. On the negative side the defending was not up to the mark one would expect from a designated player. A header right to Lopez at the top of the box set up KC’s first real chance and the sliding block attempt on Nemeth needed some more bite and urgency.

Nat Borchers 5: When you have nothing to do for the majority of the game keeping your concentration on rare breakaways is vital. Nemeth’s run was nice but the dribbling was not really tricky enough to put an experienced defender on his rear end.

Jorge Villafana (off in 83′) 6: The left back featured prominently in Portland’s attack in the first half, he could have gone down when challenged in the box after fifteen minutes but chose the honest option of continuing his run. A tasty drag back and cross coming up to halftime was a great piece of skill. In the second half the introduction of Zusi meant he had more work to do defensively and he did well until replaced by Urruti for the last ten minutes.

Jack Jewsbury (off in 80′) 7: Another good showing from the veteran, excellent positioning and work throughout the first half capitalized on the changes to the visitors line-up and put the home side on the front foot. He was withdrawn for the last ten minutes to give the Timbers a more attacking look. Even though the Kansas goal came right after that change, Portland had to take the chance and despite Jewsbury’s absence had enough men back to prevent the goal.

Diego Chara 6.5: A hard working first half just like his partner Jewsbury, but when he found himself leading a 3 on 3 break ten minutes into the second half he had to find Adi or Valeri – instead his cross hit a defender and the chance was gone. Chara has the chance to get forward when playing with Jewsbury and he needed to bring a little more to the table.

On the goal, anyone who can beat Chara twice probably deserves something – but the Colombian could have been a little more patient, especially with the second challenge when Nemeth needed to be shepherded out of the central area.

Darlington Nagbe 7.5: It was good to see Nagbe in the penalty box twice in the first ten minutes. Even though he mis-controlled Chara’s pass in the first instance and got caught offside in the second it indicated he would not spend the game in deep areas. There were a few times in the first half when he ran at players when he should have passed and vise versa. But he was in relatively aggressive mood again and hit a decent shot from Adi’s lay-off after 35 minutes.

In the second half he measured a ball perfectly for Melano and should have had an assist for the second game in a row.

Diego Valeri 6: The Argentine worked hard and created a number of decent shooting chances for himself but in other seasons he would have finished one of them. Too many of his balls missed their target both from play and from set-pieces

Rodney Wallace (off on 62′) 5.5: After a great game last week he deserved the start, but while he brought hard work and ball-winning there was little invention in his attacking and opportunities to get good crosses in were too often squandered.

Fanendo Adi 7: The big striker had some decent early combinations with Valeri and Nagbe but it was only toward halftime that he really started to dominate the Kansas central defenders. There was something of a role reversal just before halftime when a Valeri header released him in the box, but he could not get his left foot shot off.

In the second half he won almost any balls that came near him but there was too little invention from Portland on the knock-downs.

Substitutes:

Lucas Melano (on in 62′) 5.5: As soon as he came in he made a great run and had a great chance, which he did not score. That’s a situation that has been much too common so far in his Portland tenure. The youngster doesn’t have a history of scoring prodigious amounts of goals, so he and the coaching staff have some work ahead of them if he is to become a star in MLS. Fans may be impatient that he is not the finished product but it will be well into next season until he can be properly judged.

Meanwhile the reality for Portland is that they have one attacking midfielder who is good for one or two goals a season, another who has yet to recover his scoring touch after injury and a third who needs development time. So is the lack of goals really surprising?

Maxi Urruti (on in 80′): Speaking of lack of goals the Rosarian is stuck on 3 for this season, when he had 10 last season. But he isn’t getting the game time I hear you cry! Actually he has 12 starts so far, the same as last season and has only played about 100 minutes less in total. So even allowing for changed team tactics and the departure of his foil Fernandez he should have a few more.

In this game he had a great chance to equalize but his first touch took him too wide.

Dairon Asprilla (on in 83′): He worked hard to recover the ball and his pass that missed Valeri turned into a killer ball for Urruti. Ten starts, almost 1000 minutes played and he has one goal and one assist. Despite what Ramses Sandoval keeps claiming on Univision those numbers suggest he is not in fact related to Faustino.