By Matt Hoffman
It’s hard to know what to make of Saturday’s opponent, the New England Revolution. Last year everything seemed to break right for this club after they addressed some offensive inefficiencies as the team caught fire down the stretch.
Until their loss in MLS Cup, the team had never lost a game in which veteran USMNT midfielder Jermaine Jones went the full 90 while Lee Nguyen exploded on the scene last year netting 18 goals to firmly entrench himself in the MVP conversation.
If 2014 was “shock and awe“, 2015 has been been more “bite and hold.” Nguyen has had only one goal in twelve matches while Jones’s foray’s in central defense were enough to convince Jurgen Klinsmann to shift him back to midfield. Or he would have played in midfield had Jones not been saddled with a groin injury suffered in the team’s 2-2 draw with the LA Galaxy.
The goals have instead come from the place you’d expect them to arrive from on soccer team: the striker position where Charlie Davies has five goals in thirteen games (nine starts) and Juan Agudelo has four goals in fourteen starts. Agudelo will also not be making the trip as he is in Europe with the USMNT.
Intriguingly twelve Revolution players have at least one assist. Only five players have played in more than half of the Revolutions games without registering an assist: Goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth, Jones, Andy Dorman, and defenders Andrew Farrell and Kevin Alston.
The Timbers meanwhile are above the redline–or were above the redline before Houston trounced the Red Bulls on Friday night–courtesy of a two-game winning streak; the team’s first winning streak since October.
Will Johnson made his season debut last Wednesday and has some time to recover from it and was certainly a lightning bolt in his first game back. The fiery midfielder said before that he didn’t know how to play at half speed and showed as much displaying the fearlessness and tenacity that make him beloved by the home side and loathed elsewhere.
With Diego Valeri missing the last two games, Portland has found timely goals from two other members of the team’s Argentine contingent in Maxi Urruti and Gaston Fernandez. After setting up Urruti against D.C. United, Fernandez grabbed his first goal of the season (assisted by Urruti) to open the scoring against Colorado.
It wasn’t lost on Timbers Head Coach Caleb Porter:
“It was important to reward guys for getting the job done on Wednesday and I think that it paid off. You look at Gastón [Fernández], he scored the first goal. Maxi [Urruti], He set up the first goal and covered a lot of ground and did a lot of little things to help us win the game,” Porter said. “So I think what has happened the last week is that there’s been some competition created, which has injected some spirit into this group. We’re going to use that.”
This means with Valeri possibly ready to return and DP striker Fanendo Adi keeping fresh, the Timbers have options at their disposal against a dynamic New England side with Jay Heaps, among the best thinkers in the league.
