Notes on the silly season, part 1

I plan to discuss the roster in depth probably in January when we get started on our “Final Grades” series, but the past couple of weeks have seen the club make several roster moves, one a bit surprising, one a bit inconclusive, the others…very much neither.

Rob Gale

Out.

This caught me by surprise.

I assumed that making the semifinal would at least lock in the opening half of 2026 for our Ken. He’d done a bit more than he might have given the casualty list he was handed in 2025 (I’ve discussed why I don’t think he really “overachieved” in a significant way in the comments on the last post) but his tactics were never better than unfocused and crude and his squad never really seemed to develop a real understanding going forward, or come up with a way to keep possession and relieve pressure on the very-fallible backline.

That GM Agoos and the owners were too ambitious to settle for what he did bring was a pleasantly unexpected development.

Of course, clearing the deadwood out of the lumber room is just the beginning.

Now the club needs to replace him with someone who has a vision and technical skills to do more with the club, while retaining the “vibe” that pulled the squad together this past season. Who is a decent person, as well, since the lesson of Paul Riley (spit!) is that skills aren’t enough. Let’s not hunt up some genius-level manager with the soul of a pizza rat.

Sophia Wilson

Still talking.

The club’s presser simply noted that the owners “…are in discussions with forward Sophia Wilson…”

If they weren’t it’d be bad news, but the opposite simply means that the club is still working her agent, while Wilson & Co. are probably waiting to see if the offseason owners/players meeting(s) do anything to budge the salary cap. As I mentioned, the cap is simply too low, inviting wealthy clubs from Europe to come poaching.

Whether the owners will accept they need to do something about that, whether it’s raising the cap, carving out some sort of designated-player exceptions, or something different, is difficult to guess.

(It won’t be lifting the cap. Period; the cap’s too useful as a form of imposed-discipline on the plutocrats who own these clubs…)

Right now there’s no real way to know, or even make intelligent guesses, on which way these “discussions” will go.

Waivers/Releases

A total of five players from 2025 will be gone in 2026.

Laila Harbert’s loan ended without an extension, renewal, or contract offer, so she takes her 62 minutes over 4 matches (no starts) back to the Arse, or wherever she lands. I didn’t think we’d see enough of her to get a sense of what she does or how good she does it, we didn’t, and we won’t.

Four other players were waived:

Two fullbacks; Kaitlyn Torpey and Nicola Payne, and two midfielders; Olivia Katoa and Naomi Powell.

Powell is the simplest; she never had a role, never came close, never played a minute, and now is gone. Sad for her dream of playing professionally, but not surprising.

Katoa and Payne have similar career arcs.

Payne came from Paris St. Germain in 2024 and played quite a bit (just over 1,000 minutes in 19 matches), was injured in preseason 2025, lost her fullback spot, and became too deep on the chart to regain it. Presumably she returns to PSG.

Katoa was never more than real depth; 34 minutes in 5 matches in 2024, picked up a knee in October, then went on maternity leave in March 2025. Kind of the same story as Payne; got lapped by several other players while out for reasons one or another.

Torpey, on the other hand, played quite a bit in 2025; over 1,040 minutes, 18 appearances, 13 starts. My guess is that the big piece of her waiver was the Sugita-for-Vignola deal (which played into Payne as well, I suspect).

Assuming that Marie Muller returns healthy in April my guess is that the FO is thinking Vignola and Muller as the starting FBs, Reyna Reyes and Mallie McKenzie as reserves, with Isa Obaze as fifth reserve.

All four of those players are (and were in 2025) better than Torpey, so she became expendable.

What’s next?

I think the single biggest open question is the head coach.

We love to talk players because they’re the fun, bright, colorful moving objects. But the whole point to the manager’s (or HC, gaffer, whatever you call them…) job is to set up an overall fraemwork, vision, for how the team plays, and then train them to play that way.

So who we see play is going to depend a lot on how we see them play, and that’s the gaffer’s job. 4-3-3? 4-2-3-1? 5-3-2? Wilson at the #9? Castellanos at false #9? Moultrie at the #10? Wingers…Hanks and Weaver? If so, where’s the place for Tordin? Turner?

Do we need a stronger centerback than Hiatt to lead the backline? This season was the first we lacked a tower like Emily Menges or Sauerbrunn, and I think it showed…but what will the new HC think?

The bottom line is that the club is going to have to get the coaching hire right first. Then the new gaffer will have to work with the GM and the owners to straighten out the roster to get the club that she wants to play the way she wants it to.

And remember; camps open in, what, ten weeks or so? So the coaching hire can’t just be right, it has to be right quick smart to get the FO – scouts, agents, owners – rolling toward 2026 ASAP.

Can they do that?

We’ll just have to see…