Football preview: Home fans have high expectations when Sporting KC take on Portland Timbers

There’s little time for restitution or working hard at the training pitch these days, with both teams having played their last game less than four days ago.

12-7-16 (wins/draws/losses). These are the numbers for Portland Timbers when playing away games on grass, which is not the surface they have on their own home stadium (which has artifical turf). Their goal statistics from those 35 matches are 58-62 (scored/conceded).

It's time to recharge all electronic entertainment devices for Portland Timbers, who are travelling more than 2800 kilometers to play this game.

Sporting KC form and stats

Sporting KC have performed here at Children's Mercy Park this season with 5 wins from 9 Major League Soccer matches. Some points have been lost, as they have drawn 3 games and lost 1.

Defensively the home team are doing well, with their goalkeeper Tim Melia not having conceded a league goal in 188 minutes.

Sporting KC enjoyed a nice away win last time out, playing at Dallas's place. The match ended 2-0 with Alan Pulido and Dániel Sallói scoring. Attacking player Dániel Sallói bested all teammates in that game and got a match rating of 8.41 out of 10. Sallói scored one goal, hit two key passes and dribled passed the opponent 4 of 6 times.

0-0 away at Colorado Rapids before that.

There will be little rest for Sporting KC after this match as they are travelling to Minnesota United for a Major League Soccer game in only three days.

Sporting KC have proved capable of finding the net in their games here at Children's Mercy Park with 17 goals in 9 league matches. Sporting KC have conceded 10 in these home matches.

Portland Timbers form and stats

The hunting on away grounds haven’t been very fruitful for Portland Timbers so far with only 4 points returning home. The records show 1-1-6 (win-draw-lose). Three might be a magic number, but there's been little wizardry in Portland's last three away games as they have all been lost.

Home advantage was not enough for Portland in their previous game, as they lost their Major League Soccer-match, hosting Seattle Sounders, 2-6. Attacker Sebastián Blanco got a player rating of 7.6 in the game. "Man of the match" Blanco scored one goal, hit one key pass and dribled passed the opponent 2 of 3 times. As you can see from the result above, the defeat against Seattle Sounders was particularly ugly (2-6). The humiliation is still top of mind.

A home win before that, celebrating 3-2 vs Real Salt Lake.

The schedule is very tough for Portland now as they have to travel again shortly after this match. A Major League Soccer game at Austin is waiting in only three days.

The visiting Portland Timbers have scored more than one goal per away game in the league so far. The grand total is 8 goals from 8 games. People interested in "over 2,5 goals" betting will like to know that Portland Timbers concede an average of more than 2,5 goals per away match all on their own. It's worth mentioning that 10 of these goals has been conceded in their last 3 away matches.

Head 2 Head

Here's the final score when the sides met earlier this campaign; Portland Timbers - Sporting KC 2-1. As for the last ten games between these two teams, there's two Sporting KC victories, four draws and four Portland Timbers wins. Over/under statistics; six of these games ended with three goals or more, four matches with two goals or less.

Top Goalscorers

D. Salloi 11 goals

A. Pulido Izaguirre 8 goals

F. Mora Aliaga 6 goals

Sporting KC missing players

Portland Timbers missing players