Manchester City unveil their £10m women’s headquarters. What’s next for the new WSL champions?

Of course, one of the biggest questions plaguing City in the week following their first WSL title in a decade and their 3-2 FA Cup semi-final victory over cup holders and outgoing WSL champions Chelsea is whether or not their two-time (on track for three-time) WSL Golden Boot winner Shaw will continue to wear their blue shirt next season. 

The question has threatened to overshadow City’s historic triumph and potential double, and is one that will need addressing in the coming months, particularly as they bid to ensure this WSL championship is not anomalous but foundational. 

The Athletic runs through five key areas that City will actively address in the coming months as they bid to build on their 2025-26 success. 

Shaw’s future with the team

Barring an exceptional change of circumstances, the Jamaica international striker and two-time WSL Golden Boot winner (soon to be three with her 19 goals in 21 league appearances; the player in second place has scored 12) looks set to depart City upon the expiration of her contract this summer. 

The Athletic reported last week that the 29-year-old had been close to staying at City, whom she joined in June 2021 from French club Bordeaux. However, negotiations broke down over the finer details, including contract length, according to sources briefed on the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships. 

The Athletic reported in April that Chelsea are among the interested parties and have made a contract offer worth at least £1million ($1.36m) per year. Shaw has also received offers from outside the WSL, including Europe and the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in the U.S. but no decision has been made yet.

To lose Shaw on a free transfer to the very club you have just dethroned as WSL champions is a potential public relations disaster, but also — and arguably more crucially — a footballing one. Shaw has come to represent City’s strength and potential. In 134 appearances across all competitions, she has scored 112 goals, while setting a litany of club and league records, including becoming the first City player in the women’s game’s professional era to reach 100 goals and completing the WSL’s fastest hat-trick.

While City boasted 12 different league goalscorers this season and plenty of attacking talent, Shaw is outscoring their second-highest goalscorer, Vivianne Miedema, 19 to 10. Her late brace against Chelsea in that FA Cup semi-final on Sunday, an added-time equaliser and then the extra-time winner, was the latest example of her incomparable status as one of the best forwards in women’s football worldwide. 

Asked about Shaw’s potential exit, Greenwood insists she didn’t know the future of her team-mate. 

“Right now, for me, Bunny’s our player,” she says. “She’s also a really, really good friend of mine. I would love Bunny to stay at this football club forever. What she’s done for this club is incredible. She’s an incredible person, I absolutely love her and hope I’m celebrating with her for many years to come.” 

Summer plans: “No squad overhaul”

If Shaw is to leave, finding a quality replacement will be critical. 

Yet City Women managing director Charlotte O’Neill, who works closely with the side’s director of football Therese Sjogran on recruitment but allows the latter to lead strategy, does not anticipate any type of “overhaul” this summer. 

“We were saying that we’ve built this team, especially over the last two years, you can see the depth is there that we didn’t have before,” O’Neill told assembled media on Tuesday. “Our plan is always to move and to be in the market for top talent. 

“It’s about adding in the key positions that we need, so we’ll make moves, but we don’t need an overhaul. We’ve got one of the youngest squads in the league that’s playing brilliantly together.”

As The Athletic reported last month, City are pursuing a deal for England winger Beth Mead, who will leave Arsenal this summer upon the expiry of her contract. While sources at the club insist the move for the 31-year-old is about bolstering the experience and winning mentality of the squad, other sources question the merit of recruiting an older winger given the quality in wide positions already at coach Andree Jeglertz’s disposal, including Kerolin, Aoba Fujino, Mary Fowler, Iman Beney and Lauren Hemp, some of whom have struggled for consistent starts.

City have also shown interest in Arsenal right-back Katie McCabe, with full-back being a key area in need of recruitment ahead of a more demanding 2026-27 season that will include a return to the Champions League.

Developing a ‘Winning machine’ through the academy

According to O’Neill, maintaining City’s momentum requires three parts. 

Having the best talent (“finding, developing and keeping it”).

Having the best staff.

Having the environment.

City fans will read the words “keeping it” and invariably point angrily at the prospect of losing Shaw as a free agent. 

Indeed, it’s difficult not to see the irony.

But O’Neill also emphasises the importance of the two other words in that first point: finding and developing. 

Having spent eight years at City’s boys’ academy, O’Neill has helped develop talents such as Phil Foden, Rico Lewis and Nico O’Reilly, underscoring how crucial it is to nurture a strong youth system for sustained success. 

Next season, the women’s setup at the club will have seven academy sides, including a fully professional “next generation” team training full-time at City Football Academy, using the pitch right next to the seniors’ one. Those next-gen players will have a bespoke education programme “identical to what we offer for our boys”, according to O’Neill, while City have also appointed former City and England forward Izzy Christiansen to help with coaching. 

“The investment we’re making in the academy means we’re hoping to build this winning machine that just keeps going and going,” O’Neill says. 

“One of the benefits of higher salaries and bigger transfer fees is that this means academies make perfect business sense. No one wants to go out and spend money they don’t need to when they’ve got elite talent in their own academy.” 

O’Neill called the introduction of academy contracts this summer “transformational”, while also noting that she’d be open to having a City B-team competing in a division lower down in the English pyramid to help prepare academy players for professional football. 

Incorporating more youngsters into matchday squads at senior level is easier said than done.

The gap between age-group and first-team environments remains significant, and while City’s new facilities have the academy pitches located alongside the first team’s one to increase a sense of visibility and communication between the two groups, Jeglertz has often chosen this season to incorporate boys from the City Football Group into his team’s training sessions rather than girls’ academy players due to the physical and technical limitations of the latter.

How to manage a European workload

City’s first title triumph in a decade was celebrated raucously by players and staff, but that doesn’t mean every moment this season was happy.

A significant factor in them becoming champions was the kindness of the fixture schedule, but Jeglertz admits that, due to the lack of European games following their fourth-place finish a year ago, some players were left “unhappy” when regularly left out of the starting XI. 

The increase in matches next season with European football returning should mandate more rotation. 

“We have too many good players to play these few games that we are playing,” Jeglertz said. “The squad is built for more games. That’s been the biggest challenge this season. But then I just need to make sure that I’m communicating all the time with them and showing that I trust to put them in. Otherwise, it’s just going to be empty words.”

Of course, managing the load of Europe is another matter entirely, as City’s 2024-25 season showcased, with an already-small squad left threadbare and gasping by the end.

Jeglertz, O’Neill, Greenwood and Deakin all insist that the new facilities will help ensure they can cope with the greater demands next time.

Indeed, before this season, the women’s team formerly shared facilities with City’s boys’ academy. This left the women’s first team working around the gym and physio schedules of other sides. Deakin recalls how each September, when the boys’ academy players returned to school, the women often suffered from sickness due to being exposed to bugs the lads had picked up, while meal plans were often a matter of what was left available rather than what was required for elite female athletes. 

Having their own space that operates strictly and specifically to the women’s team’s schedule and needs increases performance optimisation, says Deakin.

Players have immediate access to the nutrition they need both before and after training and rehabilitation. The club have hired three dedicated chefs, as well as nutritionists, to create individualised meal plans, while also catering to cultural preferences (City’s Japanese players have been provided engraved chopsticks with which to eat, while Shaw, who does not like strawberries or blueberries, is made a “tropical fruit” smoothie for post-match refuelling). There is also a hydrotherapy room, with hot and cold plunge pools as well as an underwater treadmill. 

According to Deakin, some of the women’s gym equipment has been made specifically to cater for the injuries that occur more predominantly in women’s sport, notably lower-limb ones. Additionally, many of the physios and medical staff hired have arrived from elite sporting areas beyond football, such as rugby, triathlon and Britain’s Olympic teams or, in the case of Deakin, the military. 

‘Act like a winning team’

Upon his arrival last summer, former Denmark Women head coach Jeglertz was tasked with changing the mentality of a team who had finished as WSL runners-up six times in nine seasons.

The hows of doing so are intricate. O’Neill undertook a cultural evaluation, specifically asking whether staff and players felt empowered to communicate and trust each other. In response, City have made concerted efforts to incorporate squad bonding exercises and days out. The layout of the new facility further promotes communication and collaboration, O’Neill says, which has led to more honest conversations about standards and reaching them.

The offices of Jeglertz, Sjogran and O’Neill sit in the same area as the rest of the staff in the women’s setup, while the team’s analysis work takes place in the players’ lounge, where staff and players also watched Arsenal drop points to Brighton and Hove Albion last week to confirm their title win. Analysis sessions are also more collaborative, with Jeglertz foregoing the cinema-style lecture space used by many coaches and instead asking his players and staff to help lead sessions and even incorporating breakout groups into the operation. 

But the Swede is not afraid to call out standards not being maintained, even after victories, and ensuring those connections are strengthened in the coming months will be paramount as City’s title credentials are tested.

“I cannot guarantee (success next season),” Jeglertz says. “But working to be a winning team is one thing. Now we’re not talking about acting like a winning team. We saw that in the Chelsea game. That was acting like winners.

“That’s where we are from now on: winners that need to act like winners every day.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Manchester City, Women's Soccer

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