2024 Final Grades: The Coaches, Trainers, and Management

Whew.

Finally we’ve come to the end of our look back at 2024, with the folks in the technical box, in the training rooms, and in the C-suites.

The earlier parts are here: goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, and forwards.

Why Was 2024 So Utterly Meh?

In his comment on the forwards post PTFC Dave kind of summed up the first four discussions: “It feels like the message is pretty uniform across the lines, with the possible exception of goalkeeper: We have good players, nerfed by our coaching.”

Was that true? Let’s look at the roster and the grades they got:

Keepers:
Alvarado – No grade (now released)
Asman – Incomplete (now released, signed by Orlando)
Kozal – Incomplete Passing (now released, unsigned)
Bixby – Incomplete Failing (for her poor 2023)
Hogan – C
Arnold – C/C+
Overall Grade: (Not given, but probably a C-/D for the poor management of the Keeper Mob, poor vetting of the Alvarado and especially the Arnold signing, and poor starting keeper selection during the season.)

Defenders:
Nally – No grade (now released, signed by Odense in the Danish Danmarksturneringens)
Sauerbrunn – B+ (now retired)
Hubly – D/D-
Obaze – C+(Incomplete)
Muller – B+
Reyes – A-/B+
Payne – C/C+
Klingenberg – No grade (deep depth, possible retiring soon, given ‘Brunn’s decision)
Hiatt – B/B+ (Offseason signing from Gotham; presumed replacement for Hubly, now presumably for Sauerbrunn)
Daiane – C? (Offseason signing from Flamengo in the Brazilian Ligue 1A; looks like depth only)
Overall Grade: C (Given the stats; GA/GD 6th of 12 in the league and the visible defensive issues in match play; we’ll talk about the roster issues in a bit.)

Midfielders:
Hirst – Incomplete
McKenzie – Incomplete
Wade-Katoa – Incomplete
Sheva – C (Now released, unsigned)
Coffey – A-
Sugita – A
Fleming – B
Moultrie – B
Beckie – B+/C- (Traded to Louisville in August 2024)
Overall Grade: C- (This one does look like an obvious coaching problem; two outstanding players, three “above average” (tho one traded away), one “meh” (who was waived, so okay), three poorly/little-used reserves, and from that an overall “sub-meh” unit? Hmmm…)

Forwards:
Dias – No grade (Now released, probably an F for poor field performance)
D’Aquila – D (Now released, unsigned)
Sinclair – D (Now retired)
Smith – A-
Weaver – B+/A-
Linnehan – Incomplete (passing)
Spaanstra – Incomplete
Turner – Incomplete
Overall Grade: C (Difficult to separate the coaching from the injuries (Smith, Weaver) and form (Smith post-OG) and the roster issues)

Definitely looking like coaching issues nerfing the good midfielders. Take two stars and three demi-stars and make a tasteless stew? Yeah, that’s on coaching.

The backline problems (as we discussed to death in the Defenders post) seem to circle around the “Why is Hubly starting over Obaze?” issue. We never did get a good answer for that (and I’ll get there, but that would have been a terrific question for the post-season-presser-that-wasn’t, so…) but let’s call it half-GM/half-HC problems

The forwards and the keepers? I think the issues were less coaching and more poor roster constriction/management for the keepers – that’s a GM problem – and injuries/form struggles for the forwards (not really anyone’s problem) combined with the failure to find another plan than Smith hero-ball (which is coaching).

So; kind of a tangled mess. Some player problems (individual injury/form struggles/failures), some poor roster construction (a GM/HC failure), some poor player-role use (coaching fail), some poor tactical choices (also coaching fail). Let’s look at the pieces to see if we can sort through this pile.

The Coaching Staff

The Head Coach

Last time we did this we spent a shit-ton of bandwidth discussing Mike Norris versus Rhian Wilkinson because Norris had just taken over the gaffer’s job and was set to return in 2024. I concluded:

“It’s hard not to think that given the strength of his roster Norris should have run away with the league, and at least made the Final. A lot of the troubles that, compounded with shit luck, ended the 2023 season short of the Shield and the Star seem to circle around the management of the squad. To me the big test is the coming year. Norris has the lessons of 2023 to learn from.”

Mike Norris (2024)

He failed to learn them, started 2024 going 0-1-3, and got canned.

Grade: F

Yeah, that’s a solid F.

Here’s the thing, though; Norris didn’t technically get “canned”. He got Peter Principled upstairs to…

…”technical director”.

We’re going to get there, but to me that was the first big ownership red flag.

One of the most pernicious problems with the Peregrine organization was this sort of cronyism. The Shakespearean concept of “tragic flaw” is something that perverts a personal value or strength into a public menace. Bravery becomes mindless fury. Compassion becomes weakness.

With Merritt Paulson it was “loyalty”.

If you were a good and faithful servant he would stand by you. That could be heartwarming; the example that I always think of is Meg Morris, who sacrificed her body playing for him and who he stuck with though her rehab and beyond.

But it had some awful flaws. This sort of “he/she’s not competent but they’re nice/loyal/we/the players like them so…” keeping people in-house, thinking small and tepid rather than big and ambitious.

Or worse; Riley (spit!)

We’re definitely coming back to this.

Well, here were the Thorns, four games into the league campaign, without a head coach. What’s a club to do?

Promote an assistant, of course!

Rob Gale

This was a second red flag.

I discussed Gale versus the other options in the “Failing Upwards” post back in April.

I didn’t see it:

“Gale seems to have been tapped for his tenure rather than his c.v., since his HC experience is limited to three seasons with something called “Valour FC” in the Canadian minor league (where in three seasons his club went 20-11-32) as compared to Sarah Lowdon’s more recent tenure in Houston (see “Envious Casca” back in January for her resume) as well as deeper well of top job experience.”

Well, under Gale the club ripped off six consecutive wins between mid-April and mid-May. By Matchday 16 and the beginning of the Olympic break the Thorns had gone 8-2-2 under Gale and were a solid fifth in the table

(And it’s worth noting how much better that looked at the time. The club had been dead last, 14th of 14, when Gale took over and had climbed steadily. Plus the top of the league was brutal; Gotham, Orlando, Washington, and Kansas City were playing like monsters:

Fifth behind that wolfpack with the chance of a three-game playoff hot streak? Looked just fine…at the time.)

Then the international players returned from France and…

…the fucking roof fell in.

2-1-7 over the final ten matches. The Thorns hung on to sixth largely because everyone below them was utter crap. The loss to Gotham in the quarterfinal seemed foreordained.

My assessment of Norris’ failures in 2023 centered around three main problems he’d inherited from Wilkinson and how he dealt with them…or didn’t:

1. Formations. Wilkinson’s 3-5-2 had been a hot mess until she relented into a more effective 4-3-3/4-2-3-1. Norris’ fiddling between those seemed like troubling micromanagement that helped churn the squad and disrupted cohesion.
2. Player positions. Wilkinson didn’t believe in them, and while not as dogmatic Norris kept pushing players around the pitch: “What he did was plug players in and out, especially in trying various combinations in midfield. The result was that it often appeared that he didn’t have a vision; that his tactics were undeveloped or barely visible at all. As with formations, that led to dropping points unnecessarily.”
3. Sinclair. “Repeatedly starting Sinc over players who were in better form made it clear that Wilkinson’s judgement was not objective about her former teammate and longtime professional first-among-equals.” Norris started Sinc a lot in ’23, so kind of the same problem, but while his 2024 was too short to be certain whether he’d figured out for that Sinc was now a sub/depth piece he only started her once (on Opening Day) and yanked her at halftime, so I think he had figured her out.

Gale’s 2024 saw many of the same issues but with a couple new ones.

1. Formations. Mostly the 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 again, and Gale never really found one that worked consistently with his roster because…
   – he never solved the “no RW” problem for the 4-3-3,
   – he never found a replacement at LW when Weaver was out,
   – he couldn’t find a working midfield set; Beckie, Fleming, Moultrie, Sinclair, and Sugita did too many of the same things.
   – he had centerback issues we’ll touch on in…
2. Player positions. The midfielders were an obvious problem, but the pairing of Hubly with Sauerbrunn was so clearly less optimal than starting Obaze that I can’t explain it unless Hubly had compromising photos of Ken or something. The backline wasn’t a tire fire like Norris’ had been in ’23. A small upgrade – like starting Obaze over Hubly – might have paid big rewards.
3. Sinclair. A disaster. Eighteen starts? Inexcusable.
4. The Keepers. The signing of Macca Arnold was (we’ll get there) a LeBlanc panic-buy when it looked like Hogan was imploding. But Hogan had improved to near-league average by July. Choosing – or allowing himself to be pressured – to start Arnold after the Olympic break was a poor choice if her five matches were any indication. She and her defenders looked undercooked and uncoordinated, and that helped fuel the 0-1-6 dumpster fire in August and September.
5. Tactics. KenBall was a gormless mess, a welter of throwing Smith at defenders, possession without purpose, midfield confusion, exceptionally poor setpiece defending, and more “dink-dink-boot” Route One.

In 2023 I handed Norris a B-. I thought he’d cooked up a barely-edible stew from top-quality ingredients, but the bottom line is his club finished second and made the semifinal. That’s the definition of “above average”.

But this past season Gale had at least as strong a roster and barely crept into an expanded playoffs. Once there his squad looked as mediocre as he’d been piloting them outside his ephemeral initial six-game run and were turfed out of the quarterfinal without much trouble by the semifinal losers.

Grade: D

It’s tempting to slap Ken with a hard F just for power-diving the Thorns’ potential-high-performance aircraft into the ground.

Still. He finished above the redline, going 10-4-12. That’s kind of “unsatisfactory but passing”.

That said, I don’t want to see him on the touchline when the team shows up in February at Coachella Valley and the Great Carrot Festival therein.

The Assistant Coaches

Three:

Let’s take them in what looks like order of importance, starting with

Sarah Lowdon

I discussed Lowdon in detail back in January when she was hired as a Norris assistant. My conclusion?

“What I find fascinating about this is that as an actual “head coach” Lowdon looks better on paper than Norris. His experience is primarily as a specialist coach, and that the most un-soccer-ish specialty, goalkeeping. One year as Wilkinson’s assistant, and a single season in charge. Hers, on the other hand, has general management (i.e. overall squad tactical and technical) assistantships all over the map, including a time as operations manager in Florida.”

She seemed to be a loyal lieutenant until Norris got booted upstairs and then, well…she got passed over for the top gig and I don’t really understand why other than perhaps it was a personality thing?

The story on both Norris and Gale was that “the players like them”. Implying that perhaps Lowdon not so much..?

Other than that, do we know anything about her?

Lowdon might have been in charge of the club during Ken’s mysterious illness in late September when we saw briefly the three-centerback set. If so, not much of a recommendation; 0-1-2 to three of the worst clubs in the league.

Grade: D

That seems harsh. We don’t know; Lowdon might have been midnight-calling Ken with brilliant ideas every week and getting shot down. But if your excuse is “I worked for a dope who ignored me”, well…the maximum range of an excuse is zero meters.

Vytas Andriuskevikus

This one’s hard for me to write, for by pure chance I ran into Vytas at the new-owner meet-and-greet at the now-unfortunately-closed bar side of The Soop in February and I really enjoyed the encounter. He came across as a sort of knowledgeable fanboi, very animated and personable. I liked him.

But.

The defending last season was presumably Vytas’ brief, and the defending wasn’t very good.

Down at the bottom of the league on setpiece defending, mediocre in giving up shots and goals…this was not a great defending squad, so…

Grade: D

Sorry, Vytas. I’ll still stand you a round at the Soop next time, okay?

Jordan Franken

We’ve talked about the keeper mess, and it’s hard not to drag Franken for a lot of it.

Largely because he’s Australian and seems the most likely suspect for the Arnold Debacle. I’m guessing he was a prime mover pushing LeBlanc to make the deal, a proponent of hyping Arnold as a Big Star, and pushing to move her into the starting XI, all of which now look ridiculous.

I might give him a sliver of credit for helping Hogan out of her early-season crater if not for all the other keeper fuckups; assembling the bizarre pile of them, the failure to find minutes for Alvarado and Asman and Kozal and their resulting waivers, and the overall unimpressive keeper roster performance to date.

I don’t know what the guy’s strengths are, but for 2024 he can’t avoid an

Grade: F

I thought that Nadine Angerer had hit the wall in 2023, but this poor jamoke doesn’t look like much of an upgrade.

Overall Coaching Grade: D-

The coaching staff cleared the low bar of “missing the playoffs”, but not by much. The squad has a fair amount of individual talent, at least enough to have finished fifth or even challenged the top four. In theory.

Instead the club was lucky not to have dropped further; the Thorns 2024 points per game was 1.31; Bay FC’s was 1.31 and Chicago’s was 1.23, while the fourth-finishing club, Kansas City, was over two points per game. The Thorns were much closer to the drop than the top.

That’s a coaching problem, and as of this writing – December 18th – remains unsolved.

The Training Staff

In 2023 we had a huge issue; Pierre Soubrier’s fuckups, firing, and the cost (losing Crystal Dunn). That pulled the training staff’s “A” for keeping the squad generally healthy down to a “C”.

Last season? No such issue.

Instead we had physical problems: big injuries (Weaver’s leg, Sugita’s face) and, I think, an emotional/mental one (Smith’s return from the Games). I don’t recall many of the sort of ticky-tacky turf injuries we’d seen in previous seasons, so that’s good.

The Weaver and Sugita injuries were serious, and other than working with them on rehab – which seems to have gone as well as possible – the injuries themselves aren’t on the training staff.

Smith, though…I’m hesitant to ding the trainers because as we’ve discussed, Smith is The Franchise. But…some thing/things we not right with Smith after France. Lingering knock? Mental exhaustion? Some of both?

Whatever the reason(s), I think the trainers might have done better to recommend Smith get more rest and recovery. I think they might have known that she was struggling but couldn’t stand up to the club’s pressure to clear Smith’s return.

Let me emphasize that this is just purely my guess. Otherwise…

Grade: A-

The Front Office Management

General Manager

Technically this position is vacant; the former occupant, Karina LeBlanc, has been moved upstairs in much the same manner as Mike Norris and for much the same reason. However her replacement has not been announced, and signings have continued, so presumably LeBlanc is still doing some work in place.

Last season I handed her a “C” but gave her the option to upgrade if she reeled in some more, decent, signings beyond Jessie Fleming.

She did, bringing in Marie Muller and Isabella Obaze before Opening Day, both useful players. She also oversaw several signings in midseason, including Arnold, as we’ve discussed.

It might be worthwhile to look back at LeBlanc’s body of work since her hiring to get a sense of her performance. Since 2021 she’s been involved in the following significant player moves. Players in italics are still rostered:
Sydney Nasello (2022): drafted, not signed – F
Natalie Beckman (2022): drafted, signed, waived in November 2023 – F
Gabby Provenzano (2022): drafted, signed – C
Simone Charley, Tyler Lussi (2022): traded to ACFC for 2022 expansion draft protection* – C
Christen Westphal, Amirah Ali (2022): traded to San Diego** – C-
Hina Sugita (2022): signed from Kobe Leonessa – A+
Janine Beckie (2022): signed from Man City, traded August 2024 for Turner – B-
Taylor Porter (2022): signed from Tenerife, lost to free agency 2024 – D
Britt Eckerstrom (2022): signed as a short-term replacement, retired – A
Reyna Reyes (2023): draftee, signed – A
Izzy D’Aquila (2023): draftee, signed, waived November 2024 – F
Lauren DeBeau (2023): draftee, not signed – F
Lauren Kozal (2023): draftee, signed, waived November 2024 – D?
Yazmeen Ryan (2023): traded to ACFC in January to make space for Beckie – D
Natalia Kuikka (2024): became an unrestricted free agent, signed by Chicago – F
Marie Muller (2024): free agent signing from SC Freiburg – A
Isabella Obaze (2024): transfer deal negotiated with FC Rosengard – B
Nicole Payne (2024): transfer deal negotiated with Paris St. Germain – B
Mackenzie Arnold (2024): free agent signing – C-
Kat Asman (2024): draftee, signed, waived November 2024 – D
Olivia Wade-Katoa (2024): draftee, signed – C
Payton Linnehan (2024): draftee, signed – B+
Kelsey Kafusi (2024): draftee, not signed – D
Katie Duong (2024): draftee, not signed – C
Mallie McKenzie (2024): NRI, signed – C?
Alexa Spaanstra (2024): free agent signing – B?
Reilyn Turner (2024): trade for Beckie – B?
Sam Hiatt (2024): free agent signing – B+?
Daiane (2024): free agent signing – C?

Comments: * – the Charley and Lussi trade got $100K, a 2022 draft pick (Nasello, so worthless), and expansion draft protection. Charley proceeded to destroy her achillies and hasn’t played seriously since. Lussi went nowhere at ACFC but has done well for North Carolina. The money and protection were positives, the pick wasted, and neither player was a huge loss. Kind of a wash.

** – The trade with San Diego was kinda weird. Portland only got $50K and didn’t get “protection” from the expansion draft, but there must have been some sort of under-the-table deal. Ali was decent for San Diego in ’22 and ’23 but slumped last season. Westphal looked kind of the same, but her 2024 form-drop got her traded to Houston. Again, kind of (shrug emoji).

LeBlanc by the numbers:
Solid hits (A’s): Sugita, Eckerstrom, Reyes, Muller,
Pretty good work (B’s): Beckie, Obaze, Payne, Linnehan, Hiatt (probably…)
Better than “meh” but who knows (B?): Spaanstra, Turner
Totally meh (C’s): Provenzano, Lussi/Charley, Westphal/Ali, Wade-Katoa (so far), McKenzie (so far), Daiane (so far), Duong (lost but 4th rounder, so…), Arnold (so far)
Not great but not disasters (D’s): Porter, Kozal, Ryan, Asman, Kafusi (second rounder so wasted a highish pick)
WTF, KK? (F’s): Nasello, Beckman, D’Aquila, DeBeau (high pick, wasted), Kuikka (wanted to stay, lost to fuckups).

Four big hits (with the caveat that supposedly Sugita was a Parsons target rather than a LeBlanc deal, but, hey…), seven “decent” pickups, eight fuck-even-I-could-do-this-stuff (counting the expansion deals as a single event), five that-could-have-gone-better, and five utter shit.

Call the “C’s” the red line? Eleven deals above the line, ten below, and that’s giving LeBlanc credit for Spaanstra and Turner who we still know very little about.

That’s almost the Platonic Ideal of a…

Grade: C

The problem with that mediocrity is that clubs like Orlando, Washington, Kansas City, and Gotham had managements with more ambition and more skill. While RAJ fiddled with LeBlanc the other four burned up the table.

I felt that the fuckups that left Kuikka to walk without an offer should have been curtains for LeBlanc, that she was left to faff about for almost all of 2024 was another red flag.

Which leads us to our final stop:

The Owners

In 2023 I summed up what I hoped to see from the Bhathals:

“Will they be willing to replace Norris in midseason if things look troubled? Will they be willing to replace LeBlanc if the rumors turn out to be true and she’s not up to the task? Can they replace the old whatever, grab-ass, every-which-way, oh that’s just Golub being Golub and Soubrier being Soubrier and Menges and Wilkinson being…well, you get the idea.

To my mind the most important thing the new owners need to do is to sweep out the old slipshod Peregrine ways.

Get good people into the Front Office and deal with them honestly and openly.

That includes a “communication director” that actually prioritizes communicating with the fanbase; it’s a minor thing, but it bugs me that it’s been almost a month since the sale and the “Thorns” website is still a tab of the Timbers site. Webpages are pretty simple, gang. You can’t run up a basic club page in a month? Seriously?

Figure out how to make the club the target of envy and spite throughout the rest of the league; we’re supposed to be “Soccer City USA”. Let’s get back to acting like that.”

Well.

To their credit, yes; they kicked Norris up four games into the season.

To their discredit…

They kicked Norris up to a higher position, rewarding incompetence,

They took forever to do the same to LeBlanc,

They ripped the “interim” tag off Ken way too eagerly, making it difficult to be shut of him now he’s shown his incompetence.

Their slow-walking LeBlanc means that even if their GM hire is a genius who immediately prioritizes shitcanning Ken the GM is going to have a fiendishly late start finding a replacement while “preseason” starts in two months!

The replacement of Peregrine hires has been glacially slow. I got an email from the club season-ticket rep in early December. He’s a good guy…and a Peregrine. There’s finally a RAJ Thorns website, but the ticket reps? Nope.

And the communications?

Jesus wept. What a shitshow.

No post-season presser. That’s a huge negative, enormous red flag for me. When you fuck up, you stand up and own up. The owners owe the fans, the ones who pay their rent, an honest accounting of what went wrong. If you can’t be honest then, why should we trust you elsewhere?

No word on the GM hiring process. Nothing.

This is all unpleasantly reminiscent of the Old Regime.

Can this change? Only if the Bhathals want it to, and so far they’ve shown little interest in doing that.