BEAVERTON, Ore. – It was the elephant in the room for the Portland Timbers heading into the 2015 season.
Where was the offense going to come from without their most important attacking player, Diego Valeri – not to mention team captain and midfield stage-setter Will Johnson?
In that sense, it’s probably with little surprise that the Timbers have struggled to find the consistent attack they’ve been known for the previous two years with Valeri pulling the strings.
Replacing 21 goals and 27 assists – Valeri’s production in two seasons in the Rose City – would be a daunting proposition for any team.
And through six games, the Timbers have just six goals and have been shut out in half their contests following Sunday’s 2-0 loss to Orlando City SC. More than half of Porland’s goals have come through strikers Fanendo Adi (three) and Maximiliano Urruti (one), who have lined up alongside each other in a 4-4-2 formation, a departure from head coach Caleb Porter’s traditional 4-2-3-1 formation (or 4-3-3, depending on how you look at it). The other two have come via defensive midfielder Diego Chara on a counter attack and center back Nat Borchers on a corner kick.
The question now becomes, will this trend continue until Valeri returns in a few weeks or he's match-fit, presumably in about a month?
“You look at chances, I think that’s a real key,” Porter said following Tuesday’s training session at the team facility ahead of their cross-country trip for Sunday’s match against New York City FC. “So if you’re not getting chances, you’re wondering why you’re not getting chances and you look at how you’re playing, you look at your organization, you look at what you’re doing. But we’re getting chances. We had enough chances to score in the last game.”
Indeed, the Timbers are getting looks.
They’ve had double-digit shots in four of their six games. Even against Orlando City, a game that Porter said was decided when his team came out sluggish in a first half that produced only four shots and a 1-0 halftime deficit, the Timbers finished with 18 shots, equaling their season high, and four on goal.
In their first shutout of the season, a scoreless draw with Real Salt Lake in Week 1, Portland also had 18 shots, six on target. In fact, Portland are third in the league in shots (78) and second in shots on goal (28) but tied for sixth in goals (although a number of teams have played one or two fewer games than Portland so far).
“For me, it’s the final third, it’s the quality on the finish, it’s those details,” Porter said. “We work on it every week, and we’re going to continue to work on it. But we’re getting in good spots, we’re getting enough chances to score, and that’s why you see in the game where we scored three goals – it was similar in terms of how we played – we finished on the day. So we just have to finish better.”
Porter said the bulk of the production in his formation must come from the tip of the attack, either the two strikers in a 4-4-2 or the striker and attacking midfielder (Valeri’s position) in a 4-2-3-1.
“No matter how you break it down, your front-four guys need to produce,” Porter said. “And with the way we’re playing now with two strikers, your strikers, they need to produce.”
That puts the spotlight on the Adi-Urruti partnership.
Porter’s reasoning behind fielding two strikers together after three games in his 4-2-3-1 formation – with Adi up top, Darlington Nagbe in the No. 10 position and Rodney Wallace and Dairon Asprilla on the wings – was to get his two best goal scorers, Adi and Urruti, on the field at the same time. That pushed the Colombian Asprilla, an offseason signing, to the bench as a late-game spark and Nagbe back to the right wing, where Porter believes he is most comfortable.
And Adi said he and Urruti haven’t yet reached optimal chemistry.
“Playing up front is just an understanding, it’s growing,” Adi said. “… It’s just something we need to keep working on and keep growing, and hopefully we’ll get to the point where we want to reach.”
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Meanwhile, Valeri has watched with great apprehension the team struggle without him. He returned to limited training last week and Porter hopes he’ll be able to train 100 percent by next week.
Valeri said he likes the chances the attack is creating, saying they just need to develop “more patience, more confidence on our side of play.”
“It’s a long season, and we will find ways to score more and create more, and I think we have the players with the quality to do that,” Valeri said. “…We will get points because in most of the games we deserved points. Maybe the points don’t show the performance.”
Dan Itel covers the Timbers for MLSsoccer.com.
