In the first 10 minutes though, he was the only attacker who seemed to be doing anything to get the ball in the box. It stopped quickly after that though.
Eh not sure why we're all surprised by Jaime. You could see it last season. When a player looks lost on the field after joining a new team you can attribute it to learning the system. When a player's touch is heavy, and he's fumbling the ball that really has very little to do with the system in which he's playing. Historically RSL players have been notoriously bad at ball control, especially the first touch. So while I recognize a player can be useful despite a bad touch, I don't feel like you should ever pay someone with a bad touch DP money. That's the main reason I'm upset about Jaime.
I agree with the player agent here. http://www.sounderatheart.com/2015/3/7/8169565/ron-waxman-player-agent-no-fan-of-timbers-announcers
So let's talk about broadcast quality. I was watching on a crappy SD connection (which I was still grateful for) but the production quality just seemed worse than last year. The camera crew didn't always follow the ball and I'd be stuck staring at some guys up field and wondering what was actually happening. The graphics seemed disproportionate to the screen size. Just seemed ... meh. Anybody else get that impression?
Is Garcia and Jaime the answer on the wings? Can Morales and Allen play there? I do like 15's idea of Allen in for Beltran, but Beltran is good enough defensively that I rather try Allen up top. Schuler and Olave were beast, as Nicky was as always.
Is it really all that fair to single out Jaime for a poor touch? Aside from a few occasions, most of the team was having a pretty rough time with their touch and passing. It's early season form on wet turf. I doubt it's something he's all that used to, and the guys that are more accustomed to it also had pretty poor touch. I'm reserving judgement until we're a few games in, and aren't playing on crappy turf.
Having had to listen to those clowns for the many years I lived in Portland I agree, now that the Quakes announcers have changed it's tough not to list the Timbers announcers as the most homerish in the league. Robby Earle is solid, but can put on them green tinted glasses quite often. The rest are pure hot garbage. I'm just glad John Strong is no longer on the team, that guy is a flat out idiot and homer to the nth degree. Thankfully I was watching in a very loud bar last night so we couldn't hear much of what the Timbers announcers were saying. They had the Root Sports feed on, didn't catch any of the KMYU feed but it sounds like it was awful. No HD? What the hell is the point?
We do usually suck on turf but our record/production w Jaime starting is not good. IMO Garcia has passed him, Olmes was way more active last night. If Sebastian sits Luke and Jordan are probably your candidates to slide into the lineup on one part of the field or another. On replay I'm really impressed with Portland's young guys and new additions.
I didn't. Regardless of whether I did or not DP's need to be held to a higher standard anyway. That's why they get paid more. As I thought I clearly stated before I'm basing his touch on his half season last year as well. Positioning is something you can't fault a player for in a new system. A good touch has nothing to do with a new system. As of right now I don't see a good first touch as a necessity for your average MLS player. It is, however, a standard that every DP should be held to.
Finally got to see the highlights. 3 and half minutes and ONE RSL highlight (Sabo header in the 8th minute). Was there really nothing else the whole game that RSL did?
The pass from Javi late in half two would be worth including. He had a free kick on goal at about that time too.
RSL had a good stretch for about 10 minutes in the first half 25-35th minutes then we played decent from around the 80-90th minute. Outside that 20 minutes we pretty much sucked. Lucky for us Portland pretty much sucked too.
Fair enough in that regards, but even our higher caliber players didn't look good. Even still, iirc Jaime only played 3 games worth of minutes last season. It's not like he had 10 full games or anything substantial. I'll gladly jump on the bandwagon if he doesn't improve during the next few games. When you have a game against a team on turf, I'd expect at least 1-2 training sessions on turf before the game. That's just poor coaching.
Not to nit pick or anything (ok, yes, to nit pick), but they trained at the U's indoor facility (I'm pretty sure it was at the U) which has turf. Plata broke his foot on it.
I'm quite the opposite on this - I want the Monarchs to have turf so this team can train on it leading into weeks where we have to play on it
Plata broke his foot at Soccer City - which is field turf - in Draper. semantics, but whatever That day of training was their only one I can remember being on turf and it was just a short session to get the legs loose before flying down to Arizona
Youse all sound like the Emerald City bunch when Dempsey showed up. Jaime played 261 minutes for us last year, he gets to start out this year in friggin' Portland, one of the most difficult places in the league to play, and you're demanding instant results this year. Yes, he's had one off-season to get to know the team, but how about we give him a few more games before we call for the guillotine? Granted, he had a shit game, and maybe he will end up with a bad case of Gil-itis and go all invisible on us. But maybe we just need to relax and give him and the team a few games to get used to each other and to the 4-3-3.
Man, that game reminded me of Up's rants about the 1st team actually playing games together during the preseason. I'll just chalk this game up to being an extension of preseason where the 1st team is actually playing together. Also, what the heck is wrong with the guy that is splicing together the highlights on MLS's app? I watched the highlights from every game over the weekend, and every one of them was either cut short, had odd plays that weren't really highlights, or they'd show a portion of a play and cut away. It was just terrible.