When the Portland Timbers were last at Providence Park, they left the field to their second straight 4-0 victory, having defeated the Houston Dynamo three nights after downing the LA Galaxy in U.S. Open Cup play. Every adjective you could use to describe a hot team felt applicable. Confident. In-form. Carrying momentum. Whatever a team is supposed to look like when everything clicks, that was last week’s Timbers.
Then a mid-week road trip happened, head coach Giovanni Savarese had to rotate his squad, and the Timbers left Montreal with a 2-1 loss. Many of the team’s veterans stayed in Portland, but after being handed their month’s second loss, do the Timbers still have the virtue of momentum?