Manchester City's near-miss shouldn't affect brighter long-term prospects
It's a case of what could have been for Gareth Taylor and Manchester City after losing out on the WSL title, but the progress in 12 months offers hope for the future...
What could have been.
Had we all sat here 12 months ago off the back of Gareth Taylor being offered a one-year stay of execution as Manchester City head coach and said he and his team wouldn’t bring home a trophy come the end of next season, yet would still be offered a new longer-term deal off the back of it, there may have been some queried looks.
Taylor’s new deal didn’t go down well with a percentage of Man City fans when it was announced at the end of the last campaign in May 2023, but the club felt there had been enough glimpses in his previous two seasons, which saw him win both the FA Cup and Continental Cup, to side with continuity.
Added to the fact there were major changes behind the scenes, such as new Director of Football Nils Nielsen, and a desire to not change the playing squad too much, consistency was the call of the day and Taylor was given 12 months to convince his bosses he was worthy of a further chance.
Despite the zero next to the ‘trophies won’ section of the season, it’s hard to argue against the decision, both last summer and again this.
Speaking to WFC last week, City midfielder Laura Coombs said the team had “found consistency” this year and an identity everyone was on board with.
“Yes, we want to play the best football, but we definitely want to win and everyone has bought into how we play and how the club plays.”
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Having a squad of players who buy into your work is the first crucial element for any manager, and Taylor has clearly done a good job of persuading key players this is the place to be, as has been evidenced in an array of their biggest names signing new long-term contracts.
Alex Greenwood, Khadija Shaw and Lauren Hemp have been three of the latest key names to pen new deals at the club, with all three linked with some of the biggest clubs across the continent.
Hemp in particular is entering the peak years of her career and has chosen to spend at least the next three of them working with Taylor at the City Football Academy, there can be few greater votes of confidence for any head coach than that.
But it’s not just Taylor’s role which is giving everyone within the club hope that this season’s near-miss, and a title they should probably have won, will be a one-off, but instead the catalyst for greater success in the future.
It very much feels like an elusive second Women’s Super League title is closer than ever, and that’s as much to do with planning off the field as it is on the field.
In the past, there were years where City fell behind their rivals in terms of investment and were not competing in the biggest markets, instead looking only domestically and while always competitive, could never quite do what Chelsea and Arsenal were doing.
There were also too many windows key players would leave en mass. As we enter a summer of genuine stability for the club, it’s easy to forget it’s only two years ago Taylor saw Georgia Stanway, Caroline Weir and Lucy Bronze walk away for free, as well as losing Keira Walsh to Barcelona.
12 months previous, his North American cohort of Rose Lavelle, Sam Mewis, Abby Dahlkemper and Janine Beckie all returned to the USA, and there were too many summers of major change as new players came in and took time to settle.
Last summer though, eyebrows were raised by Taylor publicly admitted after the final game of the season – after missing out on Champions League football completely – that he would sign just one player in the summer transfer window.
That player was Jill Roord, and even then he has been without the Dutch international since suffering an ACL injury in January.
It’s left Taylor essentially fighting with the same armoury he had 12 months ago, yet they have ended up with eight more points, 11 more goals, 10 less conceded and three more wins.
When the experienced Nielsen arrived, he told WFC last summer there was a long-term plan, but that many of the changes would be behind the scenes, including in the academy which is headed up by former City goalkeeper, Karen Bardsley.
“We also plan ahead for what’s going to happen in the long run and that’s part of my job here,” said Nielsen last summer. “It’s to make sure the team is always able to be at the top of the league and hopefully win some trophies.
“In this case, it was quite clear from the start the amount of talent we have in the team is something we are very happy with and there are only a few additions needed to be really competitive next year. We were not far away last season, there were a few things we were missing which we have tried to sort out now and it means the main focus has been largely on the renewal of contracts.”
At first team level, Daniel McPartlan, Ruth Nichols and Emma Deakin all arrived in various performance roles, while long-term Managing Director Gavin Makel was replaced by Charlotte O’Neill.
Makel had been the one dealing largely with contracts in the past, yet now City don’t have to fear a summer where key players may walk away for nothing.
Post-match on Sunday, City announced what many fans expected, that those who did remain out of contract would leave the club, but in Ellie Roebuck, Demi Stokes, Filippa Angeldahl, Ruby Mace and the retiring Steph Houghton, they are losing players who for various reasons were on the fringes throughout the season.
Hemp, along with Khiara Keating, Yui Hasegawa and January signings Laura Blindkilde Brown, Tara O’Hanlon and Poppy Pritchard are all committed for another three years, while Greenwood, Shaw Roord, Mary Fowler, Leila Ouahabi and Jess Park have two years left on their deals.
Manchester City Contracts
2025
Laia Aleixandri, Laura Coombs, Chloe Kelly, Esme Morgan, Kerstin Casparij, Sandy MacIver, Alanna Kennedy
2026
Alex Greenwood, Mary Fowler, Leila Ouahabi, Jess Park, Jill Roord, Khadija Shaw
2027
Lauren Hemp, Poppy Pritchard, Laura Blindkilde Brown, Yui Hasegawa, Tara O'Hanlon, Khiara Keating
It’s a good position for Man City to be in, and with the tantalising prospect of Vivianne Miedema joining this summer, it would be another huge feather in Taylor’s cap to prize way a key player from a major rival, when for too long for the club it has been playing on the wrong side of the conveyer belt.
Taylor was predictably non-committal when asked about the prospect, but admitted City had lacked depth in attack should their worst fears happen and leading scorer Shaw get injured, which happened at the worst possible time with just a few games to go.
City trailed Chelsea by 10 goals and didn’t have the options their rivals had to change things around.
While Emma Hayes also lamented her own injuries, she still managed to have several attacking options despite long-term injuries at different points of the season to Sam Kerr, Mia Fishel and Catarina Macario, as well as spells out for both Mayra Ramirez and Lauren James.
But Taylor’s biggest challenge will be to get this team over the line.
In the four games City dropped points in this season, all the final blows came in the last 10 minutes of games, something which could be coincidence given he certainly doesn’t lack experience in the team, but it’s hard to believe it is when it’s happened four times – five if you include the stoppage time goal conceded to Tottenham which contributed to the end of their FA Cup campaign.
There was definitely circumstances too. Guro Reiten’s 98th-minute goal all the way back in September – which in the end proved critical – came against the backdrop of playing with nine players for a period of the game, while away at Arsenal an error from an experienced Keating cost them in the 87th-minute.
Against Brighton, it was more an inability to find the net at the other end than it was Lee Geum-min’s 81st-minute goal, while the home game against the Gunners is still fresh in their minds, and really was the costly blow in the title race.
It’s easy in a hypothetical world to theorise about how they would be champions – and unbeaten – had games finished at 80 minutes, but the women’s game doesn’t bow to those rules, at least not anymore!
It does show how fine the margins are, and Coombs is right when she describes the WSL as a brutal league.
Taylor and City though cannot lose sight of the longer-term plan they are on, and with Arsenal facing a potentially busy summer and Chelsea heading for a big change after 12 years of Hayes, they have to swoop in and start off next season quickly.
Potentially unaffected by the Olympics compared to some of their rivals too which a large core of their players available for pre-season after Team GB’s failure to qualification, Taylor may only lose Alanna Kennedy, Fowler and Hasegawa to the July-August tournament, possibly Aleixandri and Ouahabi too depending on Spain’s squad selection.
Qualification for the Champions League group stage would be another tick in the box, with City at least skipping the first qualifying round this time, but there is really no reason to believe they cannot go a step further domestically when we sit here again in 12 months’ time.