What Happened: Spurs and West Ham winning, Eagles crashing and Ratcliffe talking
Flo Lloyd-Hughes takes a look at what went down in the WSL and highlights some of the latest pieces to read on The Cutback.
Welcome to another edition of The Cutback’s newsletter What Happened. This is your weekly round-up of the biggest talkings points in women’s football. This mail-out will always be free to read and sent to your inbox every Monday.
If you haven’t subscribed to The Cutback then what are you waiting for? Push the button.
Festive fun
If you’re looking for a bit of Christmas karaoke come and join me and the Counter Pressed crew as we team up with Baller for a special party at the Karaoke Hole in Dalston, east London on 19 December.
Use special code CPP for £4 tickets. We’re raising a bit for charity too, it is the season of giving after all.
Speaking of which, my good friends at The Blizzard, the quarterly football publication full of top-class football authors, have got a special Christmas offer going.
If you subscribe to The Blizzard now you’ll receive a brilliant Christmas subscription bundle which includes The Evolution of Football poster (Blue/A3 unless specified otherwise), Streltsov - a novel by Jonathan Wilson, The Blizzard's quiz book The Quizzard, and The Best of the First Five Years of The Blizzard. Click the link to make the most of this special Chrimbo deal. Perfect for football fans.
Anyway, that’s enough festive deals and admin, onto the football.
Let’s check in on Spurs
After some heavy and deflating losses to Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal, Spurs got a much-needed confidence boost with a 2-1 win over Everton on Sunday.
It wasn’t the most convincing attacking performance as they had to rely on a set-piece routine that wasn’t dealt with by Everton and a penalty. The fact that Beth England scored both is definitely a bonus given her quiet season so far.
It’s been a while since we checked in on how Spurs are getting on and to be honest most of the coverage around them has been about defensive chaos, especially those horror showings against City and Arsenal.
As it stands, Spurs look like they’re going to be cementing mid-table, not quite able to challenge the teams above them but beating the ones below, which is half the battle.
The next game is an interesting one as Spurs face Brighton, everyone’s one-to-watch this season. Brighton have already shown they can cause the big teams problems even if it means not actually grabbing a win. Against Chelsea their bravery at the back once again cost them, albeit Chelsea were pretty messy playing out too. That chaotic game ended 4-2.
Read Rachel’s full piece on Spurs’ 2-1 win over Everton and their season so far here.
A five-goal thriller down the bottom
It’s been a while since I talked about the relegation battle but on Sunday there was a chaotic game down the bottom as Crystal Palace blew a two-goal lead and lost 5-2 to West Ham.
That win takes West Ham up to eighth and five points from the WSL’s magic number of 13 (that seems to be the par to escape relegation). Theo Lloyd-Hughes’ did a big piece earlier this season on the relegation battle and crunched some numbers on how to survive in the WSL.
This season’s relegation battle is shaping up to be really interesting given there are quite a few teams scrapping at the bottom. Crystal Palace have been holding their own and doing a lot better than many of us expected. Sunday’s game was an example of how teams can be punished quickly in the WSL, even when it’s a team that usually struggles to create.
Incredibly but maybe not unsurprisingly, that was West Ham’s first back-to-back win at home in the WSL since January 2022, when Olli Harder was in charge.
Palace will really be kicking themselves, especially as so many of the goals game from Palace’s left side, where West Ham were running in behind over and over again. There were some defensive mishaps as well which didn’t help Palace’s cause.
Palace are a solid team that do create chances but their lack of finishing and defensive frailty has undone them plenty of times this season. Only Aston Villa (8) have dropped more points from winning positions than Crystal Palace (10) this season. Palace’s last win came at the start of October.
One of the reasons so many people put Palace as favourites for the drop is because of their inexperienced squad. The club didn’t go crazy in the transfer window and chase big ticket WSL names, they have some exciting loanees, including Chelsea’s Lexi Potter, and a strong young core like 23-year-old Annabel Blanchard. The experience has come in goal-poacher Katie Stengel rather than solidity elsewhere. The stats show just how young this team in with Palace having handed more minutes to teenagers than any other team in the league this season. Perhaps the game management issues aren’t that surprising.
Palace are bottom of the table but they’re only three points behind West Ham. It’s extremely tight down there with just a point between 12th and ninth. A win can make a huge difference, it’s going to be a fun story to watch this season.
United let loose against Liverpool
As always it was a very noisy week for Manchester United.
A few days ago, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, a minority owner in the club, was once again making disappointing comments about the women’s team.
In a wide-ranging interview with the United We Stand fanzine, Ratcliffe said about the women’s team: "There's only so much that you can do and our focus has been on the men's team. If not, you get spread too thinly. We need to sort out the main issue, the men's team. The women's team is an opportunity. Women's football is growing really quickly in popularity and size. We need to participate in that. The girls wear a Manchester United badge on their shirt and they're representing the club."
Ratcliffe has previous when it comes to showing complete disinterest and disrespect towards the women’s team. He didn’t show up to the Women’s FA Cup Final, which Manchester United won in May, their first major trophy. He’s also made comments to media that show a similar lack of any sort of long-term ambition for the women’s team.
On Sunday morning, United faced more drama as The Athletic revealed that Dan Ashworth would be leaving his role as sporting director. Ashworth was considered an ally for the women’s team but there hadn’t been much of evidence of how he was going to influence their progress in his five months at the club.
However, United managed to block out the noise and secure a critical 4-0 win against Liverpool on Sunday. The win is even more important given Liverpool did the double over Marc Skinner’s team last season.
Much like United’s 3-0 win over Spurs earlier this season, United weren’t flawless here, but they took their chances and made the most of Liverpool errors. They haven’t looked great going forward at times this season so it was an important result.
Conner Roberts will have some analysis of that game coming on The Cutback later this week so keep an eye out.
Elsewhere….
Interesting Counter Pressed with sports lawyer Daniel Geey. We spoke to him about player contracts, releases clauses, image rights and all that good stuff.
That’s it from me today. See you same time next week.
 | A guest post by
|