Inside PTFC | Solutions to slow start require honest view of potential

There was an ideal we carried into the 2019 Major League Soccer season, a vision of what the Portland Timbers could be. Like most teams’ could-be's, that ideal was built on what we’d seen before – not only the 2018 Western Conference Championship campaign but also the years prior, when the team finished first in the West’s regular season (2017) and, sandwiching a near-miss on the 2016 playoffs, the team’s first MLS title (2015).

Some predictions of the team’s 2019 struggles seem prescient, now. And with the Timbers’ 0-4-1 after their first month, it’s helpful to look at the logic behind some of those views. But it’s also helpful to remember that, within the team’s current 28-man roster,…