A lot of people were right on the edge after the preseason.

Quite a few joined them after last week’s draw with Philly.

But, seriously, come back to stable ground, kids.

There have been lapses, both offensive and defensive, but we’ve seen one competitive match. One.

The Rose City Invitational was a nice warm up but let’s be honest: it was just that. A warm up.

I’m not here to make excuses. There’s really no need. Last weekend’s match against Philly was a decent performance but, listening to the players afterward, we all know they recognize it wasn’t good enough.

In the post-match presser, Caleb Porter said he hoped the last-minute La Gata goal would be the one that finally unlocked the Timbers potential to score. I’m pretty sure he’s right. And I’m also pretty sure that if they see two, three goals against Chicago, they can ride that momentum into Colorado on the 22nd.

Early points. That’s the important thing here. My one and only preseason prediction was that the Timbers will both win and lose more games this season than they did last season. In 2013, we saw four games pass before the Timbers notched that first win – IN APRIL. And we all felt those missing points late in the season when the possibility of the Supporters Shield was slowly slipping away.

More wins. We will need more wins if we want to see trophies raised.

And the team knows this. This is a team, while faltering on defense against set pieces, hasn’t seen a goal from the run of play yet this year, preseason included. That’s kind of a big deal. We can slight the faults of the new guys, and we can point to past mistakes of the veterans, but we still have to recognize that what we’ve got is nothing to sneeze at.

Chicago comes into this match having dropped points to Chivas last week. Chivas. They lost to Chivas. The Fire might not be the best team out there, but I’m guessing that loss might be motivational. What I’m not sure of is how far that motivation will carry a team with an injured Mike Magee and a potentially-starting Lovell Palmer.

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If you’re following along, if you care at all, I’ve been doing slightly more journalistically-styled match previews over at Prost Amerika. They’re awful, but they have what information I can glean from the interwebs about each upcoming match. And, hopefully, I’ll get better at them if Prost keeps letting me write them. And if I get better at them, maybe I’ll be writing more stuff over there. Don’t get your hopes up.