Rational optimism

Leicester City Women season preview, 2024-25

My post a few weeks ago looking forward to Leicester Men’s 2024/25 season was all caveats and forlorn hope and accounting. Even though the Club has since (unexpectedly) won its legal appeal against the Premier League’s charges that it breached PSR rules - let’s be blunt, on an absurd technicality - the threat of a points deduction has not entirely disappeared; and even without that we’re clearly in a relegation fight, though one I now think we have a reasonable chance of winning. It will be one of those seasons we will be able to point back to with the perverse pride of the diehard fan: I stuck with this team even when the football was grim and hope was scarce. This is where I was when we were bad.

The vibes around the women’s team are very different, though. I am excited for the season to come, and optimistic that we have a good chance of playing some entertaining football and pushing up into WSL’s mid-table region for the first time. Every Leicester fan should be down at the KP supporting the Women, if nothing else as a break from the endless gloom of following the Men.

That said, I was quite optimistic this time last year too. After two seasons as WSL newcomers, focused on doing just enough to avoid relegation (Leicester finished 11th in 2021-22 - the twelfth-placed team gets relegated - and pushed all the way up to tenth the following year), last season it felt like there was plenty of reason to hope for better. And duly, for a magnificent few days at the start of last season, Leicester was top of the league, after a 4-2 win at newly-promoted Bristol City¹, and then after beating Everton we got a draw at Manchester United, the first points we’d ever won against one of the big teams.

And the season progressed and the team evolved, and we strengthened in the January transfer window, bringing in (among others) our two Japanese players, Momiki and Takarada, who have both impressed. By February the team was flying (just as the men were faltering). In successive games we beat Birmingham 6-2 in the FA Cup (my first visit to Burton Albion’s Pirelli stadium, our second home, and the first time I’ve been at a game where a Leicester team has scored six goals) and Bristol 5-2 in the reverse fixture of that opening match. Football is great fun when your team plays with such rare attacking flair. The eleven goals in those two games were only three fewer than Leicester scored in the whole of the 2021-22 WSL season (it took until my thirteenth WSL game before I’d seen us score eleven goals). Happy days.

The next game I went to we lost 4-0 to eventual champions Chelsea, but that’s to be expected. It felt like I was supporting a team on the up, with plausible aspirations to finish mid-table: after that Bristol result we were seventh in the league, and we had as many points as in the whole of the previous season with a third of the games still to play.

But then a bombshell: the manager was suspended, and eventually dismissed, for having a relationship with a player. The interim head coach did her best, and oversaw a win over Liverpool which got us to the FA Cup semifinal (where we lost to Spurs, a game I went to). But the league season fizzled out - we didn’t win any of the seven remaining WSL games, and only picked up two points, ending up tenth in the league again, though Bristol kindly ensured we were never in any serious danger of relegation.

If you’d have asked me at the end of last season what I wanted to happen over the long summer² I’d have said three things: recruit an exciting new manager, keep the core of the team together, and strengthen particularly in defence.

And - encouragingly - that’s what’s happened. Amandine Miquel has arrived as the new manager from Stade de Reims - in her seven seasons there she took them from the French second tier to fourth in the top flight (the Première Ligue) last season, behind giants Lyon and the two Paris clubs. If she can come close to replicating that sort of success at Leicester in the coming years, she will be doing brilliantly. In any case, it feels like an ideal appointment.

We kept our most important players too: I was expecting we might struggle to keep hold of Jutta Rantala, our Finnish winger who scored some wonderful goals for us last season (including the goal that put us ahead against Spurs in the FA Cup semi, though sadly we were unable to hold onto that lead) and assisted plenty of others, which led to her being shortlisted for the WSL Player of the Season award (not bad for a player in a team that finished tenth). But I didn’t notice any serious speculation she might move. Meanwhile Lize Kop, one of our two (very good) goalkeepers, was apparently being considered by Manchester Utd as they dealt with the departure of England’s sweary Mary Earps. But Kop’s still with us. So is Asmita Ale, who has signed permanently having spent the second half of last season on loan from Spurs.

Of course there have been some departures: Josie Green has gone to newly-promoted Palace; the promising young attackers Ava Baker and Monique Robinson have moved on, as have a couple of others; and Aileen Whelan has retired. But the starting XI from the final game of last season are all still with us, and that sort of stability (a marked contrast to some of our competitors in the league) can only be a good thing.

And we’ve strengthened. As well as Ale, Ruby Mace, a defensive midfielder who was on loan at the KP from Manchester City the season before last (and was impressive) has signed permanently. Two new defenders have joined to shore up the back line, Swaby and Kees. And Miquel has brought over two attackers she knew from Reims: a young winger, Chossenotte, and - most excitingly, perhaps - Noémie Mouchon, who scored nine goals in 22 appearances last season. On the Guardian Women’s football podcast Tom Garry predicted she could be the WSL signing of the season. This feels like a well-balanced squad - plenty of options throughout the team (though another defender wouldn’t have hurt), and we’re not overly reliant on one or two players for goals, with lots of different options in attack.

It’s always risky reading too much into pre-season games, but during a mini-tournament in Perth a few weeks ago Leicester held Manchester City to a 0-0 draw (and lost on penalties) before thrashing West Ham 5-2 (their two goals were late consolations) - five different Leicester players scored, including Mouchon. I watched some of that game - the highlights, graciously preserved on West Ham’s website, mostly show wave after wave of Leicester streaming forward; some of that flair from last season has perhaps been rediscovered. Although she didn’t score, Deanne Rose in particular looks to me like she could be gearing up for a big season.

The new season starts this weekend (the WSL is now in the hands of a new body, WPLL, rather than the FA, but I’m not sure this will make much difference in the short term)³. It would be a real surprise if Chelsea, Man City and Arsenal did not once more occupy the top three places in the table come the end of the season, though I wouldn’t want to predict in what order.

It would also be a surprise (though less so) if the rest of the rich six did not make up the second quarter of the table, though Manchester United’s owners don’t seem very interested in the women’s team and a couple of its key players have been sold (including Earps, who has gone to Paris Saint-Germain⁴) - though they have recalled from loan one of Spurs’ key players from last season, young England midfield star Grace Clinton, which may weaken Tottenham. Liverpool, meanwhile, were promoted to the WSL the season after Leicester, and though not the force they are in the men’s game, seem to be strengthening season by season (they comfortably overtook better-funded Man Utd in the table last season).

Leicester joins Everton⁵, Villa and Brighton in a third group, competing for upper mid table. Being a small league, and with a concentration of quality (and therefore points) at the top end of the table, means that a few points either way can make a big difference to league position: last season there were only six points between Villa in 7th (24) and Leicester in tenth (18); that’s a couple of lucky wins or defeats either way. So it’s really hard to call how these four teams might finish, but as far as I can see Leicester has as good a chance as any of finishing seventh (as the Guardian predicts), and maybe pushing higher if one of the bigger teams slips up. The fact we’ve gone a bit under the radar - the problems at the end last season perhaps disguised how good we could be, and we didn’t make any statement signings to draw attention to ourselves over the summer - will perhaps help us, and mean we’re more likely to spring a surprise or two.

That leaves two teams likely to be competing to avoid relegation: newly-promoted Palace and West Ham (who seem unloved and underinvested in - they finished eleventh last season and were deeply unimpressive in that pre-season game in Perth).

I’ve dipped my toes in the unofficial WSL fantasy football game for the first time this season - as I wrote about the (very much official) Premier League version last year, as well as being a bit of harmless fun it’s a good way of getting to know something about players from other teams, so that games make a bit more sense when visiting teams arrive. Trying to pick a WSL fantasy team this week I realise how little I know of players beyond Leicester’s and the Lionesses, so my team (‘Rantala Hills’, an obligatory pun) is a bit random. I’m not expecting to do very well this season, but you have to start somewhere⁶.

So Leicester begins our WSL season away to Liverpool tomorrow, and then we are at home to Arsenal next weekend. A tough start, and I won’t be surprised (or particularly concerned) if we don’t get anything from those games (though we won away at Liverpool in that FA Cup quarter-final in March). The following five games, though, are against teams we should be able to compete with, starting with Palace at home.

So I have three hopes for this season (for which my niece and nephew have their first season tickets):

• First, some fun football - lots of goals and a team that seems to be enjoying playing together. All the signs are good so far, but we won’t really know until the season-proper starts.

• Second, that attendances at the King Power stadium increase. Bristol City last season managed an average attendance of over 7,000 at Ashton Gate for their woeful relegation season⁷, and more than double that for their match against Manchester United. Our average attendance was only 2,600, and our highest was only just over 5,000. The tickets are inexpensive, and we’re well established at the KP where our matches have been played since we got into the WSL, so there is no reason why our support shouldn’t be a lot higher: the players deserve it.

• Finally I’d like us to finish comfortably mid-table - I would be very happy with seventh - and another cup run, ideally getting to a final this time, would be good too.

Here we go…

1. In the opening match of the title-winning 2015-16 season, Leicester men also won 4-2, but history was never going to repeat itself.

2. With only twelve teams in the league, each team are only plays 22 WSL games a season, less than half what the men played in the Championship last season, so the season starts later than men’s leagues and the games are more spread out.

3. Niche fact: this is the first season the WSL has consisted solely of teams whose men’s teams are in the Premier League.

4. Earps started her career at Leicester.

5. Everton will not be helped by the problems with the protracted sale of the club - see the problems the men’s side is currently having.

6. I think the game, in its second season, is still finding its feet too - Ruby Mace is misclassified as a defender, and Mouchon is only £4.5m which could be a ridiculous bargain if she does as well as I hope she might.

7. They lost every single home league game: their six points, a win and three draws, were all picked up in away fixtures.