Women's Super League review: From the game of the season to favourite quote

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14-05-2025

Women's Super League review: From the game of the season to favourite quote
Another Women's Super League season, another Chelsea title. Sonia Bompastor's team secured a sixth championship in a row to further assert their dominance of the English game's top division.
While Michael Cox described the WSL season as a 'very dull WSL campaign overall', there were, nevertheless, moments and games that stood out.
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From Naomi Girma's record-breaking transfer to Chloe Kelly's Arsenal loan move, our experts, Charlotte Harpur, Megan Feringa and Michael Cox, tell us what the 2024-25 WSL season will be remembered for.
Game of the season – Manchester City 2-4 Manchester United
Manchester United had only won one out of 10 WSL Manchester derbies. They had never beaten Manchester City away in the league.
So when they were 3-0 up within 36 minutes in their rivals' own backyard, no one expected it. There was quality dappled with calamity as United hunted City's back line and haunted goalkeeper Khiara Keating with their aggressive press.
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A run-of-the-mill game would have seen a team protect their healthy lead for the next hour, but this game was the gift that kept on giving as it swung one way and then the other. Just before half-time, former Arsenal striker Vivianne Miedema headed home before Rebecca Knaak made it 3-2, with everything all to play for in the second half.
United could have wilted, but they came flying out of the blocks. Elisabeth Terland pressed Keating like a terrier and, nine seconds after the restart, United extended their lead through Ella Toone. She had never scored against City, let alone a hat-trick. The possibility of a comeback was kept alive as City threatened but didn't take their chances. It could have been more than a six-goal thriller.
Goal of the season – Johanna Rytting Kaneryd
In the first couple of months of the WSL campaign, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd was the division's in-form player.
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The Chelsea winger's first goal in a 5-2 thrashing of Tottenham was particularly spectacular. Millie Bright sent a left-footed diagonal ball in behind the opposition defence and Rytting Kaneryd, making a run from the right flank to meet the ball inside the box, somehow managed to volley it with the inside of her foot while hanging in mid-air, applying both dip and an element of curl, to send the ball looping into the far corner.
The Swede's team-mates could barely believe it. She probably wouldn't be able to replicate it given a second opportunity, but that doesn't matter, it was a truly outstanding finish.
Moment of the season – Naomi Girma's record-breaking transfer
This season was full of drama, from a litany of managerial exits to player transfers. The week leading up to Jonas Eidevall's exit from Arsenal deserves an honourable mention, including the mega-sized P45 a fan brought into the Emirates with Eidevall's name written on it.
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Chloe Kelly's January transfer saga was significant not only for its more immediate impact on Manchester City and Arsenal's respective seasons (City losing nearly all of its attacking thrust in the space of two months; Arsenal reaching a Champions League final), but because of the profound message it sent about the power of the player in modern women's football.
But there is no bigger moment than the first $1million women's footballer. Naomi Girma's January transfer to Chelsea from San Diego Wave for a world-record fee of $1.1million has established a new threshold for player value. The knock-on effects for movement in the transfer windows to come will be significant, particularly with more investment and visibility across the globe.
The fact Girma is a 24-year-old American defender, rather than a splashy, 20-goal-a-season striker, is also of note, a sign of the game's tactical evolution globally and in the U.S.
Former Chelsea manager and current USWNT head coach Emma Hayes called her 'the best defender I've ever seen. Ever'. For Chelsea and the USWNT, Girma is set to be a cornerstone for the next decade. Her transfer is women's football's Rubicon.
Did that really happen? Chloe Kelly's loan move to Arsenal
It was an unprecedented transfer saga that went down to the wire on deadline day and involved a player accusing her club of trying to 'assassinate (her) character'.
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At the start of the season, everyone knew Kelly needed game time, especially ahead of the European Championship. Come the end of the season, however, very few would have predicted she would be playing for Arsenal in a Champions League final.
As the relationship between Kelly and manager Gareth Taylor deteriorated, it was evident the winger was not going to play a predominant part in City's season. But City were reluctant to sell to a top-three team given the race for Champions League qualification.
Kelly, however, wanted to remain at the top of the WSL and given her contract is due to expire this summer, she needed to maintain her valuation. Her preference was Manchester United, but City would not name a price to their neighbours and rejected two bids from United before deadline day.
Twenty-four hours before the transfer window shut, Kelly was resigned to the fact she was not going to leave in January, but then Arsenal came swooping in. Taylor was sacked over a month later and Kelly is heading to Lisbon for the Champions League final. How the tides can turn.
Favourite quote – 'It's hunting season'
Back in March, Everton defeated bottom-of-the-table Crystal Palace 3-0, securing their third win in five matches to move them 10 points clear of the relegation zone.
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It was impressive stuff, particularly given Everton were winless and bottom of the table back in November with a squad on its last legs. Brian Sorensen's assessment? 'It's hunting season.' Sat in an unassuming back room at Walton Hall Park, Sorensen delivered the last line in movie-star fashion, a catchphrase for the camera to zoom in on as the Danish manager tipped his Everton-branded baseball cap to the audience before setting off into the Merseyside sunset.
Life at Everton has not been easy for Sorensen, who has had to navigate endless injury crises with a limited budget. In March, life started to look less grim, with a full squad and new owners who have a vested interest in the women's team's development.
Unfortunately, Everton's hunting season didn't go as well as many hoped, with the disappointing 3-2 defeat to Brighton and a 1-1 draw with Tottenham Hotspur on the final day ensuring they wouldn't be the team to take the title of 'Best of the Rest'.
But Sorensen's line won't be forgotten, and as Everton continue to venture into their new and seemingly brighter The Friedkin Group era, Sorensen's quip might yet prove prescient. The bigger hunt awaits.
The issue that will dominate the summer
It may not be the issue that dominates, but I am intrigued to see what impact London City Lionesses' promotion to the WSL will have on the other 11 teams.
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Owned by American businesswoman Michele Kang, they will be the only fully independent club in the 2025-26 campaign, whereas the remaining sides are all attached to a Premier League club.
Last season, Kang persuaded experienced Sweden international Kosovare Asllani and former Paris Saint-Germain manager Jocelyn Precheur to drop down a level to join the then-Championship side. So, who can Kang tempt now that they are in the top flight?
Money talks and a disruptor in the league may lead to other teams looking over their shoulders.
This time next year we'll be saying…
Nailing colours to a prediction mast is a dangerous game in the age of digital receipts. I wish I had the tea leaves. So, before I start: please, have mercy.
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But this time next year, we'll be talking about Manchester United and how this season of over-performance has finally been exposed. While United managed to remain in the top three, an undercurrent lurked — an inexplicable question of how this has happened, rather than faith in a bigger, grander process.
The underlying numbers demonstrated why, with United regularly over-performing in attack and defence, often spared blushes by the virtue of other teams' poor finishing or goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce's remarkable season. United's final four matches of the WSL were against West Ham United, Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal, a kind of litmus test for their European credentials. To fail to win any games and earn just two points from a possible 12 hinted at a truth finally unshielded.
How United confront that truth this summer will ultimately dictate what the conversation next season looks like. But it's difficult to ignore the precedents set in the past 12 months at the club.
The other thing we'll be saying? The WSL still has a major gap problem.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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