Promise and Disappointment in LA

Let’s start with the positives. Saturday night’s loss in LA against the defending league champion Galaxy was one of the better performances of the 2012 Timbers season. Mike Chabala and Steve Purdy were a big improvement at the fullback positions over Wallace and Palmer. Boyd continued to punish defensive mistakes with another nicely finished goal. We scored the opening goal, something we failed to do in our first four matches. We gave ourselves a chance, especially in the opening half, to win the game.

Now for the bad news. Unfortunately, none of those promising changes matter when you look at the Western Conference table and see us in the 9th and final spot. Regardless of performance, four straight losses have us on four points from six matches and a full five points out of the playoffs. We have the second-worse defense in the league in the only stat that really matters, with only Montreal conceding more goals so far in 2012.

I could go back and forth like this between the good and the bad all day. It was that kind of performance. We opened quite well, with Kris Boyd rampaging up front and finding the back of the net twice in the first half. Ironically, the second goal that was called back for offside was probably on, and the first that counted was probably off, so I can’t feel too slighted by only one counting. At that point, it looked like LA’s defense, nearly as porous as ours this season, was going to have another long night, and there would have been long odds on the game finishing without another Timbers goal.

The Galaxy have a European-level offense that has been playing like a USL reject. Up until this game, Landon Donovan, David Beckham and Juninho had all been held scoreless in 2012. That was not going to last. Each of them opened their account last night, Donovan with the leveling goal near halftime and the other two with lovely strikes in the second to kill us off. There is some consolation in being beaten by really nice professional goals. Beckham’s will be goal of the week, without any real doubt, and Juninho’s was a beautiful long-distance laser as well. Although we got away with one huge defensive blunder early on that could have added another to their tally, for the most part we were beaten from outside of the box by outstanding quality, and that should be remembered.

All in all, what matters is that we lost, but there are things to build on from this game, which I couldn’t really say after the Chivas defeat. I expect our starting eleven against the so-far-perfect Sporting Kansas City to be exactly the same as Saturday’s, with the possible exception of Jack Jewsbury, our beloved captain and last season’s biggest playmaker, who has been absolutely anonymous during this bad run of games. I’m not sure that he’ll be benched, but when he was taken off for Lovell Palmer – who has also been a massive disappointment during this stretch – it was the first sign that Coach Spencer is admitting Jack’s slump.

As I said last week, this was always going to be a tough match. Only someone with no concept of the game of football could look think that a team with LA’s quality would stay league doormats forever. Likewise, it’s not getting any easier next weekend. Kansas City has six wins from six matches, including four over Western teams. Just as we have found every possible way of losing, imploding early then late, playing both generally well and terribly, they have found all sorts of ways of winning. Where we have conceded eleven goals, they have given up only one. It’s going to have to be a very special night at Jeld-Wen Field – a place for special nights – if we’re going to end this streak against that impressive team.