Five-and-a-half matchdays into the Women’s Super League season, Leicester City are propping everyone else up, yet to take a point from their six league outings. After that come three teams on three points, and all will be hoping to avoid relegation.
Whilst it’s a little too early in the season to be clamouring, “Danger, danger, Will Robinson!” toward the likes of Reading or Liverpool, two of those teams on three points, five games in a 22-game season is still a substantial sample size.
For each team in the bottom third, there are plenty of questions and of reasons to feel uncomfortable about where they stand. But each can still take positives from their performances so far and find a glimmer of hope for the remainder of the campaign — even second-bottom Brighton, who were demolished 8-0 by Tottenham over the weekend, have shown flashes of good football.
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Here is a look at the teams in the relegation zone of the 12-team WSL, including where it’s all gone wrong and where potential solutions may yet be found. Only the bottom club will be relegated — can Leicester pull out of it, or are they doomed to Championship?
Leicester: In last place and in need of balance
On the floor of the league sit the Foxes who, despite an initial uptick in results when Lydia Bedford took over as manager from Jonathan Morgan last season, have a desperately disappointing record in WSL.
The biggest problem for Leicester is their lack of goal threat: the Foxes focus so much of their attention on remaining compact off of the ball in their efforts to not concede, but the flip side is that they look so ill-prepared when they break forward. The inclusion of forward Natasha Flint in the starting XI against Reading at the weekend gave them a degree of incision, but even the attacker, who showed so much promise when she was younger, cannot be the magician that Leicester can depend upon for the bulk of their goals.
Having lost forward Deanne Rose to a serious injury at the start of the season, there are renewed concerns over how well Reading will be moving forward. Their late win over Leicester this weekend may very well be a blip in their ongoing struggles since last season, which point to a larger problem with their place in the league.
Reading’s win over the Foxes might just be enough to keep their heads above water in the WSL for now, yet with a team like Leicester able to invest with more gusto and potentially sign more established players, questions around their long-term sustainability are once again what plague the Royals.
Although most teams are only five games into their league season, they are also almost a quarter of the way through the campaign. Some may have plunged into a tailspin too early to pull out of, while everything could still turn on its head, not least with how narrow the gaps are in WSL, which has swiftly subdivided itself into three “mini-leagues.” For now, no one team mentioned should be making long-term plans for a steady life in the top flight.
