The players that were available to Taylor failed to form a cohesive unit until later in the season when the bones of his starting XI began to move from the treatment table to the pitch and those well-established partnerships could work. The return of Roebuck in March 2022 shored up the defence, City looked far more competent with the ball and they quickly romped up the table.
It wasn’t the first time the Citizens had put together such a run over the second-half of the season and was reminiscent of how they galloped up the table after the 2015 World Cup to claim second and secure their first-ever Champions League appearance the following season. Yet where Cushing’s team used 2015 as a spring board to roll to the title in 2016, the team galvanized despite a threadbare squad and season-long injury crisis, Taylor’s City has gone in a different direction this term. Instead of being able to bring the established players together, the coach has lost key personnel over the summer, with many looking for new challenges and pastures greener.
Making it worse for City fans, many of those former players are flourishing at their new homes: Georgia Stanway has taken to Bayern Munich like a Bavarian to a stein, while Caroline Weir — seven goals in as many appearances for Real Madrid across Liga F and the Champions League — is also enjoying a fresh start. While it’s normal for players to stagnate after being at the same club for a number of years, Keira Walsh (now at Barcelona) and Stanway had been at City for eight and seven years respectively, there are arguably questions to be raised about why, and how, Taylor struggled to get the best from them.
– Thompson: Why we shouldn’t compare Walsh’s record fee to Neymar’s
With similar questions asked of the coach when he had a handful of American internationals — defender Abby Dahlkemper, midfielders Sam Mewis and Rose Lavelle — at his disposal during his first season, the wider worry is that Taylor will have the same issues fully harnessing the potential and talent of the squad available to him — forwards Deyna Castellanos and Mary Fowler, defenders Leila Ouahabi and Laia Alexandri all joined this summer — this time around as well. Although the team have only played a handful of games since the summer and there are players in the team who aren’t just new to City but to WSL, there is a question about why we’ve yet to see this team’s effervescence. Even when the football has been proficient, it hasn’t been dazzling as it could have been, and it’s clear we have yet to see their very best.
