Minnesota United manager Eric Ramsay will leave for England’s West Bromich Albion

Minnesota United’s first game of the 2026 MLS season is Feb. 21, and so the Loons will report for preseason training on Jan. 10.

What’s left of them, anyway.

An offseason that’s been marked by departures has reached a crescendo, as coach Eric Ramsay is set to leave the club to take the top job with West Bromwich Albion in the English second division, according to a league source.

For Ramsay, it’s a return to his native United Kingdom. West Brom’s base in the Birmingham area is less than 60 miles from eastern Wales, where Ramsay grew up, and moving to the Championship means that the 34-year-old rising star gets back on the managerial ladder in English soccer. He’d been hired by the Loons from Manchester United’s staff in February 2024.

For the Loons, it means that two days before the preseason begins, they’re operating without a manager. And it comes on the heels of an offseason in which they have lost four of the eight players who have played 100 or more MLS games for the club.

Dayne St. Clair, the reigning MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, signed with Inter Miami. Robin Lod, the club’s all-time leading MLS goal scorer, signed with Chicago. Perennial fan favorite Hassani Dotson left for Seattle. And the club traded left back Joseph Rosales to Austin FC.

While every move was individually defensible, from a fan’s perspective, it’s difficult when so many beloved players leave at one time. And to lose Ramsay, who’d done as much as anyone to finally give the club an identity and a sense of forward movement, means that Minnesota will begin 2026 with a whole heap of question marks.

It’s a fresh start for all three players. But the Loons probably didn’t want a fresh start as a club, given that they set a club record for points in a season in 2025 with 58. The free agents signing elsewhere and Ramsay’s departure followed the summer move that sent Tani Oluwaseyi to Villarreal in Spain.

As the 2025 season wore on, it was hard not to wonder whether Ramsay saw a future with Minnesota. The manager repeatedly referred to the club’s place in the pecking order of MLS, referencing the fact that the squad had been built with the 26th-highest payroll in a 30-team league. And a few of his quotes could make one wonder if he felt like the team’s ambition matched his own.

“If we really want to compete with the very best teams, I think we have to improve and we have to push,” he said after Minnesota’s loss to San Diego in the conference semifinals in November. “I think we at the moment can compete in our way, but as you’ve seen over the course of the season, we can be in games, we can be really consistent, but we’re never comfortable, I wouldn’t say.

“Obviously, with where we are in the food chain, to have gone to the semifinal twice in two years, I think everyone’s really pleased with that. Maybe you do that in five years, one of them, you might find your way all the way to the final. I think if you want to do it really consistently with more [comfort], and evolve the style and evolve the level of dominance in games, then the squad will need to improve. I think that’s pretty plain to people.”