What Happened: Fixture chaos, bruised Eagles and City's chances
Flo Lloyd-Hughes takes a look at the what went down in the WSL over the weekend and highlights the latest pieces to read on The Cutback.
Welcome to another edition of The Cutback’s weekly newsletter What Happened. This newsletter will always be free to read and it will be sent out to your inbox every Monday, even when its my birthday, because that’s how much I want you to know about Manchester City’s xG (expected goals) against Brighton.
This weekly check-in will have some of my thoughts on the weekend’s games and also some snippets from our amazing writers. If you haven’t yet subscribed to The Cutback then do that now, what are you waiting for?
UWCL fixture chaos
As the old saying goes, one normal day of Barclays, will never happen. On Saturday, the WSL was thrown into chaos after the fixtures for the Uefa Women’s Champions League were revealed.
Normally, a fixture release announcement wouldn’t get much reaction apart from the marking of diaries. But this one caused all sorts of problems and it was Chelsea that were the centre of it all.
Chelsea’s opening group stage game against Real Madrid on 8 October had been scheduled just two days after the English champions were playing Manchester United in the WSL. Player welfare guidelines advise that players have a minimum of two days rest between games.
So, just a week before all these games are meant to be played, the calendar gods were saying that Chelsea had to play United at home on 6 October and host Real Madrid two days later. It clearly wasn’t going to work.
To add even more layers of chaos, Sky Sports had picked Chelsea-United as its broadcast pick (over six weeks ago) and given its one of the big games of the season it had been placed in a ideal window within a stacked sporting weekend.
Uefa weren’t going to budge because it had released the fixture windows for all of the rounds of the 2024-25 competition long before the draw. Chelsea were always going to play on 8 or 9 October, even before Arsenal and City were added to the group stage. Once two teams from the same country qualify for the group stage, matches have to be staggered to avoid an audience clash, i.e. Chelsea, Arsenal and City’s games have to be split across two nights.
The WSL was going to have to work around it. Move the game and upset fans and mess up stadium logistics or just postpone it entirely. The WPLL (the new organisation responsible for the WSL, keep up) opted for the latter and the game has been postponed…..a week before it was meant to happen.
Yeah, a mess.
Baptism of fire for Palace
It has been a tough start to life in the top tier for Crystal Palace. The newly-promoted team shipped four goals in their opening game against Tottenham and on Friday night it got a whole lot worse. Palace conceded seven (7) against Chelsea live on Sky.
In the first Weekend Warm-Up of the season, I mused whether Palace might be able to close the gap on number of goals conceded for a relegated WSL side. Bristol City let in 70 last season. The numbers don’t look great so far….
Theo Lloyd-Hughes (clue is in the name) did some equations over the weekend to find out just what it might take to survive. Read his seriously data-rific piece here.
Manchester City’s search for efficiency
Manchester City secured their first three points of the season with an important 1-0 win over Brighton on Sunday. The game showed just how competitive Brighton are going to be this season, with the away side causing lots of problems and bravely/stubbornly staying true to their principles. Dario Vidošić has got his side confident on the ball and they’re very happy to play it out from the back, even if it was a stressful watch at times.
For City, the narrative was much more about missed chances. They finished the game with an xG of 3.0 (Opta) and really should have put the game to bed. Gareth Taylor will be hoping that goals aren’t the reason they lose the title again this season.
Raphael Adelugba dug into City’s attacking performances and some of the frustrations in Manchester.
Elsewhere on The Cutback:
Take a look at our subscriber chats that have been happening on the site over the last few weeks. These are basically just Twitter before Elon Musk took over. The Cutback team log on and chat to readers during a game and have some fun. Join us for the next one!
That’s it from me today. See you same time next week.