This weekend sees a matchup between two teams who, on paper, are off to fantastic starts to the MLS season. But, for both the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Portland Timbers, things get a little more complicated when you look closer. 

Portland Timbers:

The Portland Timbers currently sit 4th in the West with 7 points from 5 games. They began their season with two wins and a draw but dropped their last two matches against the Houston Dynamo and Philadelphia Union. It’s too early in the season to be getting into the statistical weeds but it bears mentioning that the Timbers have basically outscored their xG by double. A lot of this over-performance came in their opening game against the Colorado Rapids in which they scored almost every shot they took. Pretty much every other game they have played in has been an xG coin flip (if you discount the penalty they conceded against D.C United).

Probably more important, at this stage of the season, is Portland’s tactical set-up. I have to say, I think they are a tough match-up for Vancouver stylistically. Portland’s chance creation might not be as good as their goal totals suggest but the way they create chances will be a challenge for Vancouver to deal with. Most of Portland’s dangerous opportunities come from working overloads in wide areas and creating cut-backs. This sort of thing has probably been Vancouver’s biggest weakness defensively so the performance of the wide centre-backs will be important in this one. 

Where Portland seems to have gotten in the most trouble is when pressed and when trying to deal with pace in behind. These are pretty much the two things Vancouver has struggled the most with offensively.

Portland has deployed a very mid-2010s 4-2-3-1 in every game this season. Upfront will be new DP signing Jonathon Rodriguez, a mobile winger/forward type. Behind him is Evander, a player who featured heavily when these teams played last year, very much a player looking to make trailing runs and get shots from around the penalty spot. On the wings, they have Antony, a player who is going to cut inside and shoot every single time, and Santiago Moreno a more old-school north/south winger. Diego Chara (still) forms a double pivot with either Christian Paredes or Eryk Williamson. Their back four consists of Juan David Mosquera, a very attacking fullback, Canadians Zac McGraw and Kamal Miller in the middle, and MLS vet Eric Miller on the other side. Whitecaps frenemy Max Crepeau will almost certainly be in goal.  

Vancouver Whitecaps:

After a couple of road games that seemed to make Vancouver’s spluttering home opener look like a fluke, Vancouver fell 2-1 at home to RSL in a game that made the first match against Charlotte look decidedly not like a fluke. This match against Portland, therefore, will go a long way to setting the tone for the rest of the season. 

I don’t know if you can qualify this as good news but the choice to play Damir Kreilach and Brian White together in the front three has been taken out of Vancouver’s hands. White is out with a concussion. Vancouver’s offensive performance will therefore answer a very key question: Is the bigger problem that Vancouver’s front three had two slow guys or is it just that Kreilach is washed? If everything suddenly clicks that will be very reassuring. That means that their offensive struggles can easily be fixed with some shuffling of the existing personnel. But if things still sputter then it’s time to get concerned. That would mean that your big off-season addition is pretty much unusable only five games into the season. 

It will also be interesting to see who occupies the 3rd spot in Vancouver’s front three. I would guess the two options are Ali Ahmed and Fafa Picault. Ahmed is a much better player than Picault but I think you get more from him if he’s playing deeper. When Ahmed is in the front three he has less of an opportunity to advance the ball through carrying, plus I’m not sure he quite had the end-product juice to play in a front three. At the same time though, Ahmed would help with defending higher up the field because he can cover so much ground it would make up for Kreilach’s lack of mobility. Really though, I think the options available show a major weakness in Vancouver’s squad build. We were hoping this was the season the Whitecaps would take the next step and in the 5th game of the season we’re hoping that Fafa Picault is going to have a career year at 34 and turn everything around? Not great, folks! I think Vancouver’s 3-4-3 system is a winner in the long run. It has held up defensively very well and in theory, lets you field three attacking players. But they just don’t have three attacking players who would start on an MLS Cup contender (or at least the don’t have three who would start in the front three, obviously Ahmed would start in midfield or as a wing-back for a contender). You have Gauld who is obviously amazing, White who can’t create chances on his own but is an excellent ceiling raiser, and for the 3rd spot, you have ???. 

Anyway, getting back to this particular game against Portland. I think Vancouver should be considered the favourite, because of home-field advantage if nothing else. But to me, the result won’t matter so much as the performance. If Vancouver wins 2-1 by getting two shots and scoring them both then I’m not going to be feeling good. But a draw or even a loss where Vancouver handily out-chanced Portland would leave me feeling optimistic that things will be fine in the long run.