Weekend Warm-Up: New managers, new players and a hope for defending
Flo Lloyd-Hughes gets you ready for this weekend's WSL action and highlights some interesting things to look out for.
Hi everyone, hope you’re as excited as I am about the return of the WSL this weekend. It feels like we’ve waited forever with the Olympics pushing the start of the season back to late September. That’s just not very Barclays is it?
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I wanted to take a look at the opening weekend of the season and highlight some of the things that I think are interesting or might be worth looking out for.
We have loads of new managers in the league
This is a unique season in that we have five new managers in the WSL. Sonia Bompastor (Chelsea), Robert de Pauw (Aston Villa), Dario Vidosic (Brighton), Laura Kaminski (Crystal Palace) and Amandine Miquel (Leicester City) will all be making their debuts in the dug out over the weekend.
We’ll definitely be taking a closer look at these managers and their style of play as the season progresses but I’ll be interested to see how all of them get on. Here are their opening round of games:
Friday 20 September - Chelsea - Aston Villa
Saturday 21 September - Brighton - Everton
Sunday 22 September - Tottenham - Crystal Palace
Sunday 22 September - Liverpool - Leicester City
On Counter Pressed, which some readers will already be familiar with, we previewed the start of the season and talked specifically about the style of play of some of these new coaches.
Check out the latest episode.
A new Canadian superstar to look out for
I feel like we say this every summer, but it really did feel like one of the busiest transfer windows we’ve ever had in the WSL. A lot of international talent has arrived and some of them for pretty sizeable price tags.
I’m really excited to see Olivia Smith at Liverpool. She has been hyped up by her manager Matt Beard. Liverpool signed her for a club record fee of £210,000 which was was her release clause at Sporting Lisbon according to BBC Sport.
Smith has played for the Canadian senior team and was also was away with the Under 20s for the recent Women’s World Cup, albeit Canada didn’t make it beyond the round of 16.
She was the Portuguese league’s Player of the Season in her debut year in 2023-24 and also won the Young Player of the Year Award. The 20-year-old only spent one season in Portugal and having watched some of the small amount of clips available you can see she’s got great positional awareness, reads the game and anticipates well with her movement. She’s not the tallest, matching me at 5ft 3, but she definitely makes up for it with some speed and a really nice touch.
The WSL has a habit of hyping up young talent and then seeing them fizzle out, pour one out for Hanna Bennison. So, I really hope this signing hits the ground running.
Could defending come back from the dead?
Those of you that follow me on Twitter will know that I have a real thing about bad defending. I think its that fact I was a defender when I played football, I grew up watching QPR and have always covered a lot of EFL, so I can spot awful defending when I see it. The bar is very low.
But what I’m intrigued to see this season is whether it might be one of the most robust and defensive eras in the WSL. What I mean by that is, Bristol City, who were relegated last season after picking up just six points, conceded 70 goals, a whole 25 goals more than West Ham above them.
I do think we could see that defensive gap close to the bottom and hopefully Palace, who I still think will finish bottom, concede fewer goals than the Championship teams that have come before them. When you look at the chunk of teams between 7th and 11th there isn’t a huge amount of difference in the number of goals conceded, its up the other end where they struggled. Only the top five teams in the league finished with a positive goal difference which is just under par for most leagues where usually only the top half of the table will stay in the black.
I was actually impressed with some of the defending at the Olympics after a real defensive low in the WSL last season. Long may it continue.
Let us know where you’ll be watching games this weekend and what you’re looking forward to.
We'll have content on the site following the first round of games and I’ll be back on Monday with a newsletter.
Have a good one.
Flo