The weekend of Major League Soccer action begins in Oregon on Friday evening when the Portland Timbers host the San Jose Earthquakes in a battle of two sides from the Western Conference.
The two sides sit fifth and fourth in the Conference table and this match gives both teams the opportunity to move up the ladder ahead of the rest of the matches this weekend.
Portland Timbers
After blazing an early trail this season the Timbers have found it hard going in recent times. They have suddenly stopped scoring the number of goals they had been while at the other end they have started shipping them at an alarming rate and that is never a good combination so they need to get back to where they were.
Portland now have just one win in their last seven matches although a number of those games have been away from Providence Park and like most sides in this league they are much stronger at home. On their own patch they have only lost one of six games so I’m sure they will be looking forward to being on home soil.
San Jose Earthquakes
It wasn’t necessarily the best of beginnings to the season for the San Jose Earthquakes either. After they won their opening two matches they then embarked on a six match winless streak but they have now won three of their last six with two of those wins coming on the road so they look to be hitting form again.
Those three wins all came without conceding a goal so it was a surprise to see them ship four to the Los Angeles Galaxy last week. If they can get back to keeping it tight in this match then they would have every chance of emulating their win in Dallas a couple of weeks ago.
Team News
Portland are going to be without three men through injury with Gbenga Arokoyo, Chance Myers and Jeff Attinella all out but more importantly Darlington Nagbe will be absent on international duty.
San Jose are going to miss Kip Colvey who is away with New Zealand for the foreseeable future. They have a long injury list too with Quincy Amarikwa, Marc Pelosi, Shaun Francis, Anibal Godoy and Fatai Alashe all having injuries of some kind.
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Betting
The temptation for this match is to back San Jose on a handicap of some kind. Portland don’t look to be in the best of form at the minute and they are without a huge player in Darlington Nagbe but it is hard to side with the Earthquakes given the extensive injury list that they have.
I’d usually have a look at goals for a match in Portland but with the Timbers looking in a slump even that doesn’t appeal too much so I’m going to sit out the opening game of the weekend.
Tips
No Bet
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