The Three Goalie Problem

The Thorns extend Portland favorite Bella Bixby -- but the logjam at goalkeeper is jammier than ever

Last week, the Thorns announced that they signed franchise favorite Bella Bixby to a contact extension, with a guaranteed year in 2025 and a team option for 2026. It’s a move that just feels natural: Bixby is a native of Milwaukee, and has been pursuing a master’s degree in fish and wildlife administration during her playing career. This is as Portland as it gets, and really would feel weird to see Bixby in any other NWSL uniform.

That’s the good news. The problem is: with Shelby Hogan and Mackenzie Arnold also under contract for 2025, the Thorns are heading into the second straight year without a clear and defined depth chart at the position. That’s not necessarily a problem at any other position, but it definitely creates questions and uncertainty at goalie, where the dream is to lock in one player between the sticks and keep them there for 100% of the season.

All three of the Thorns’ goalies have meaningful strengths, and a reasonable claim to the role as the clear starter. However, each goalie has recent stretches of tough play in their recent résumés — reasons why you might look at the other two players as the primary option. We’ll take a look at the highs and lows of each player’s recent performance. I’ll wrap up by giving my own personal call for who would start Game #1 of the 2025 season. But: from here, it looks like “So, who’s going to start the next game?” is going to be a weekly concern. Which isn’t ideal: you want a player to feel confident in their starting role, and not looking over their shoulder at the bench each time a goal rolls in.

Let’s go in alphabetical order:

Mackenzie Arnold

Pros

• Arnold is the one player with significant international experience. She has 57 career appearances for her home country of Australia, including being the primary starter for the last several years. This includes the thrilling run to the 2023 World Cup semifinal for the Matildas. Arnold has stood tough on the world’s biggest stages.

• Arnold is the most confident at playing up the field, and beginning distribution even beyond the confines of the penalty box.

• The advanced stats loved Arnold’s tenure with the Thorns last year. The stat Post-Shot Expected Goals looked at the quality of shots by opponents on Arnold, and estimated she should have allowed 11.9 goals. In actuality, she only allowed in 10. Out of the 21 goalies who started more than one game in the NWSL last year, Arnold’s per-minute performance in this statistic was tied for best overall in the league. (The fine print is a mouthful: +0.38 in Post-Shot Expected Goals Allowed Per 90 Minutes.)

Cons

• Even if Arnold had a great performance in the advanced stats, the more conventional stats show: the goals kept coming, and didn’t stop coming. Arnold’s 10 goals allowed was a lot across five starts, and the Thorns didn’t register a victory in any of those games. The excellent podcast NWSL This Week has been especially critical of Arnold’s performance for Portland, focusing more on her shot-by-shot fundamentals.

• Arnold’s Thorns tenure has only lasted five games, giving her the least familiarity with the team, and with the league.

Bella Bixby

Pros

• Bixby put together the complete dream season, and recently. In 2022, she started 20 of the Thorns’ 22 regular season games. The Thorns defense allowed 24 goals on the year, third-best in the league, before allowing only one goal across two victorious playoff games on the way to the championship.

• Bixby’s career record is exceptional, with more career shutouts (16) than losses (12) across 57 lifetime regular season starts.

Cons

• The last time we saw Bixby, in the last game of the 2023 regular season, was an awfully shaky moment. Although the Thorns already had home-field advantage secured for the playoffs, before that game against Angel City started, the Thorns were on the wrong end of a 5-1 blowout. It was a game that, in a lot of ways, started the musical chairs at goalie, and it hasn’t stopped yet.

• Bixby’s save percentage has descended each year since her 2021 debut, with her 71.9% save rate in 2023 being 10th in the league.

• Distribution has been an issue with Bixby on the field, with the team also having a surprising amount of issues on goal kicks both short and long.

Shelby Hogan

Pros

• Despite sitting for five games behind Arnold last year, Hogan still finished a strong second-place in the NWSL in shutouts, with nine.

• Hogan developed essentially week-by-week over the 2024 season, and was fundamentally a different player from March-May, compared to June to the end of the year. In that second part of the season, Hogan shut out the opponent in 6 of 11 games, allowed only one goal per game (which would have been fourth-best in the NWSL across the entire season), and had a save percentage of 78.8% (which also would have been fourth-best).

Cons

• Hogan’s uneven performance from March to May is what propelled the Thorns to go scouting abroad and sign Arnold in the first place. In that first part of the season, Hogan allowed 1.45 goals per game, and had just a 66.6% save percentage. Those would both be very close to league-worst numbers, and, at the time, it felt like the Thorns were slow in making a change.

• Hogan has had similar troubles to Bixby when it comes to distribution, with the team frequently looking unsure of a plan of attack on goal kicks.

The final call?

Nobody is asking Thorn Town to make this call and, to be honest, I’ve found evaluating a goalie’s performance on a shot-by-shot basis one of the hardest things to have confident opinions on in all of soccer. That said, if it were up to me, I would start the year with Shelby Hogan in goal. That’s a decision that me from last April would be very surprised to hear. But, Hogan improved more, week by week, than any other Thorn last year, and I find that growth the most compelling bullet point out of everything above. Both Arnold and Bixby would have to reverse momentum from their most recent moments in goal before getting more strong, confidence-building games under their belts. Hogan ended last year on a heater.

But with that being said, Hogan is, honestly, one of the most likely players on the entire Thorns roster to get traded. In January of 2023, Hogan signed a three-year contract extension, with a team option for the year 2026. At the time Hogan signed that contract, she had played one career game, and wasn’t in position to demand a high-priced deal. Hogan’s strong second-half run of play means that, heading into 2025, she has one of the most team-friendly, dollar-per-production contracts of any NWSL goalie. It’s the type of contract that would be attractive to both a losing team from 2024 — who would hope to establish a permanent keeper for a long-term rebuild — and also a winning team from 2024 — who could see Hogan as the highest-quality option at #2.

Thinking about these completely hypothetical trades illustrates just what a bind the Thorns are in with this position. Remember that, under the NWSL’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement, players must give their consent to any trade. Hogan could very easily give consent to a trade where she is very clearly the #1 keeper on a new team, and liberated from this logjammed situation. And, if that happened, the Thorns would still be left with two players who would reasonably expect to be the team’s #1 option. So, what’s the solution here? Honestly: I don’t know.