Paige Nielsen and Amandine Henry Trades

I’m not going to lie, I was pretty gutted by these moves. And I’m very confused by them both, for a variety of reasons. I’ll try to explain it all here, and I’ll start with Henry. All stats from FBRef.

Amandine Henry

Things never did feel like they worked out with Henry, and from the outside, I’m not sure that we can ever know why. I don’t feel like she was ever played in her proper position, or in the manner to make the best use of her skills. I also don’t think that she ever looked settled. I always had a bad feeling about her loan to Lille, and the lack of acknowledgement about it from the team. There are a lot of reasons that made sense for the loan, but as nobody was talking about it, it didn’t really feel like it was one of those reasonable explanations. The thing that really bothered me was that the loan extended through preseason. I felt like Henry needed to be in camp to settle into the team, as well as to let the other players know how to play off her. Instead, she only arrived about a week before the season started.

Even so, Tweed still started her in the first three games, and brought her off the bench in the fourth, after a she’d flown to France and back on the international break. In total she played 263 minutes for Angel City this season, or 66 minutes per match, on average, which is good for 8th on the team. And in that time she led the team in progressive passes, was second in passes into the final third, fourth in Shot Creating Actions, and had the second most passes of any midfielder (behind Dougherty Howard who played 65 more minutes). Defensively, she was second on the team in combined Tackles + Interceptions. FBRef also has a tool called xG +/- Net per 90. It takes the team xG when a player is on the field and subtracts the team xG when the player is off the field. So if the team performs better when a player is on the bench, she’ll have a negative number. If the team is better with her, she’ll have a high positive number. Henry was 6th on the team, with a +0.84, and every player above her played less than half as many minutes, (e.g. Gisele Thompson).

And despite these numbers, I don’t think that Henry ever was playing particularly well. She always looked like a shadow of what she was for Lyon or for France. I guess this is all to say that I think that even below her best and/or playing out of position, she was still contributing, and I still had hope that we could find a way to better utilize her skill. I would have liked to see Rodriguez playing the 6 role and Henry playing a little higher. But for the sake of argument, maybe Becki Tweed says Henry just isn’t the type of midfielder she wants, no matter what. Maybe there was some kind of internal friction within the team and they needed to move her on. If all of that is true, I think they needed to have made this move during the offseason. These would all be things that they were aware of last year, and Henry pushing for the loan to Lille certainly makes it seem like she wanted out, so why not cut our losses then? I don’t understand bringing her back and then trading her after four games. Even trading her during the international break would have made at least a little bit more sense to me, and I think that Utah still would have paid that $75,000 a week ago. But having her start the first three games and then turning around and deeming her surplus to requirements is just confusing. Still, I can at least say that this didn’t look like it was a good fit and accept the trade solely on that basis.

Paige Nielsen

I really can’t say the same for the Nielsen deal. There are a lot of factors involved here that I’m not going to talk about, for instance what she meant to the fans, and sending an LGBTQ player to Texas, seemingly against will. It’s not that I feel like these aren’t important factors; I feel like they are incredibly important factors. But my purpose of writing these articles is to look at the things that are quantifiable in order to gain a better understanding about what actually happens on the pitch. So with that said, these are the things that bother me about this deal from a soccer standpoint.

First, statistically Nielsen is a great defender. Last season, compared to other NWSL centerbacks, she was in the 93rd percentile in Tackles, 80th percentile in Interceptions, 99th percentile in ball recoveries, and 88th percentile in Aerials Won. On the flipside, she was only in the 36th percentile for Errors, 23rd percentile for being Dispossessed, and 4th percentile for Miscontrols. I also thought that she had a really good partnership with Gorden. She goes to Houston for $100,000 ($50,000 in Allocation Money and $50,000 in Transfer Funds) and I really think that it is going to cost more than that to sign a comparable defender. For comparison, Louisville signed Arin Wright in January for $125,000 plus a second round pick (#15 overall). The fee for Nielsen also bothers me because we all know that Houston just received a boatload of cash from the Maria Sanchez deal. If, for some reason, it was also the case that the team just felt like Nielsen wasn’t the option going forward, then they should have made the switch in the offseason when there were options in free agency. Which brings me to my next point: centerback depth. With Nielsen’s departure, we now have only two centerbacks on the roster, Reid and Gorden. As this trade was made right before the trade deadline, we’re looking at 11 games, at a minimum, before we can bring in reinforcements. If either Gorden or Reid get a knock during that time, I’m really worried about how the defense will hold up with someone else playing out of position, and especially since we can’t ever seem to keep our fullbacks healthy either. And it doesn’t make sense to me that if any of this was the case, why was Nielsen getting the starts in the first three games? If she was viewed as the answer alongside Gorden for preseason and the first three games, then it seems like the only thing to make Angel City reconsider should have been a too-good-to-refuse offer from Houston. And $100,000 is not too good to refuse.

Other Considerations

The language in the press release was that “The trades free up both cap and roster space.” First the roster space. Clearly, one of those spots has Christen Press’ name on it. She’s been back in training, and as the roster was at the 26 player maximum, someone had to move on. The thing is, this should have been clear from the offseason. If there was a decent chance she was coming back before August 1st, they should have kept a spot open for her. I think that it would have been smoother for the players, and could have led to larger transfer fees if a player was moved before the start of the season. Instead, it feels like these deals were rushed to get in before the deadline, at which point Houston and Utah could offer take-it-or-leave-it deals, knowing that Angel City had to say yes. The fact that there were no transfer rumors about either of them prior to the deals adds to that plausibility. Also, if this was primarily about bringing Press back into the team, I don’t know why we didn’t move an attacker. We currently have four players considered strikers for one spot, but only two centerbacks for two spots. It would have made a lot more sense to me to move a bench attacker instead of a starting midfielder and defender. There’s also the aspect that they freed up two spots, and as I stated before, we won’t be able to bring anyone in to use that spot until August 1. Even if we signed an international free agent, we wouldn’t be able to register them with the league until August 1. So, we’re kind of just down a player for 11 games. Creating one roster spot makes sense. Creating two does not.

Then there’s the issue of the front office saying that they need to create cap space. I’ve spoken about this before, but it baffles me. Even if Angel City had maxed out their cap space and allocation money in 2023, the cap went up $775,000, from last year’s $1,975,000 max. We spent $505,000 in total transfer fees. From the end of last season, we subtracted the contracts of Savannah McCaskill, Dani Weatherholt, Brittany Isenhour, Scarlett Camberos, Mac Pluck, and Kelsey Hill. We added the contracts of Gisele Thompson, Meggie Dougherty Howard, Madison Curry, Casey Phair, Rocky Rodriguez, Hannah Stambaugh, Messiah Bright, and Kennedy Fuller. So that’s subtracting six players, three of which would have been on more veteran salaries, and adding eight players, only two of which should be on more veteran contracts. The NWSL doesn’t make the exact details of these deals public, but I don’t understand how those contracts all add up to $270,000 to put us in cap trouble. Yes, a big chunk needs to be set aside for Press, but her contract is in essence prorated, (as long as she stays on the Season Ending Injury List, her salary will not count against the cap). So that alone doesn’t explain things. And this whole exercise is based on the idea that Angel City didn’t have a cent to spare at the end of last season, which also doesn’t make sense. At a minimum, there should have been some money set aside for Press, as she was expected back prior to her fourth surgery, and the sudden retirement of Julie Ertz should have also cleared up a sizeable piece of cap space. In the end, I’m just speculating, because these numbers are not available, but all signs point to the club not willing to spend the maximum amount to build this squad. And that’s very disappointing to me. Especially when it leads to selling players that were part of the core of the team.

There’s also the issue of the comments in the documentary about how players weren’t going to be moved in season, unless they they asked to be. This always did feel problematic to me, just in terms of how professional sports work, but they did say that. I saw no acknowledgment from the club that this policy had changed, or something like trades aren’t really what they meant when they said that. From the coach to the GM, it was just kind of a “these things happen in sports,” but I think that it would have been nice just to acknowledge it. More importantly, though, is were the players aware that this was a possibility? At some level, because we started the season with 26 players on the roster, it was clear that someone would have to be traded or cut during the season to make room for Press. Again, this is not something we can ever know on the outside, but it’s an important factor.

And finally, just as a fan, the optics of this are just so bad from a transfer standpoint. Well, they’re bad from just about any standpoint. But we started the season seeing Bay FC break the transfer record for Racheal Kundananji, and then Orlando set the second highest transfer for Barbara Banda. Then San Diego pounces on Maria Sanchez’s availability with a $500,000 transfer, and now, just this morning, there’s word that Houston is buying Tarciane, a Brazilian centerback, for $500,000 also. We’re seeing teams all over the NWSL investing in their squads, yet Angel City, the richest club in the league, is focused on shedding salary instead.

So now that I’ve worked through all of these factors, it’s still pretty hard for me to see any positives about these deals, but maybe we will. It feels like Becki Tweed is already using this to create a bunker mentality, probably pretty similar to when she first took over. Maybe there will be a major transfer in the next window. But for the moment, I am a little heartbroken.