The Portland Timbers are in trouble

With more than a third of the season done, the Portland Timbers have shown they're no better than the group that got the last coach sacked.

PORTLAND — The crowd had just settled at Providence Park before Sunday’s Cascadia Cup clash against the Seattle Sounders when Portland showed it still could pull off some magic.

For the last two months, the Timbers have played without a jersey sponsor. It’s coveted real estate, a space many Portland supporters hoped could be occupied by something a little more wholesome after the Timbers’ departure from their Alaska Airlines-branded kits landed with the one company having a worse year than those linked to Boeing.

The skies showed nothing but blue, the temperature hovered in the 70s and just shortly before kickoff, the video board announced the starting lineups for the best rivalry in the MLS, featuring a Timbers team clad in kits featuring the unmistakable logo of Tillamook.

The sound of legitimate surprise cascaded throughout the packed Providence Park crowd. Members of the Timbers staff erupted in cheers — it had been a long week pulling this all off, one said — as reporters were pinged with “PORTLAND TIMBERS UNVEIL TILLAMOOK AS JERSEY PARTNER” fresh in the inbox. Ice cream sandwiches filled the freezer of the press box.

“Tillamook is a brand that truly represents the best of Oregon,” Portland CEO Heather Davis said, “and the Portland Timbers are incredibly proud to wear the Tillamook name on our jerseys.”

It was a blowout — a largely praised move for a franchise absent of such off-the-field success in recent years. The Timbers needed a win. They got one. And that rising to the occasion only further highlighted the contrast of what came next on the pitch.

Phil Neville said effort isn’t the issue.

But also, after a 2-1 loss to Seattle pushed Portland’s winless streak to nine, Neville said it’s time for his Portland Timbers to take their “fingers out of their backsides” and show how much they want to be here. These compiling losses are completely on him — no excuses, Neville said. But it also doesn’t take much prodding to get the coach of the last-place team in the Western Conference to tell you what he really thinks got them there.