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Secure your first league title for a decade? Tick. Extend your Golden Boot-winning striker’s contract. Tick. Lift a first Women’s FA Cup since 2020? Pending. May 2026 has gone swimmingly for Manchester City and they are hoping it will get even better.
Once you get that sweet taste of long-awaited success, you want more, and coaches will tell you it is not reaching the top that is the hardest part, but staying there. Keeping hold of your best players is job No 1 in that regard, so persuading Khadija “Bunny” Shaw to perform a remarkable U-turn and stay for another four years was vital.
The Jamaica striker, who scored 21 times in 22 league games this season, had signalled firmly to the club she had decided to leave, because other teams were offering more lucrative contracts and talks with City had broken down. The late intervention of senior management from the men’s arm of the club to ensure Shaw’s contract requests were met led to her change of heart. Shaw had made clear her preference was to stay and the club realised not only the value of keeping her, but the potential cost of her playing for a direct rival in Chelsea.
Shaw’s exit would have been a major momentum-killer. Her mic-drop-style reveal that she was staying, presented on stage during Monday’s trophy parade in Manchester in front of thousands of overjoyed fans, signalled that the club are serious about trying to build a winning machine and perhaps even challenge for a first European title.
The first stop is Wembley, where they face Brighton on Sunday when victory would land their first league and FA Cup double and first two-trophy season since 2019, when they triumphed in both domestic cups. It would also be their first FA Cup success in six years and their first in front of fans for seven years, because their extra-time victory over Everton in 2020 was played behind closed doors during the pandemic.
City will not have it all their own way against a Brighton side who beat them in the league in April and have been in tremendous form since mid-March, but the ambition of a confident City team, buoyed up by Shaw’s deal, is clear.
“Because we’ve won silverware, there’s more hunger there to win even more,” the midfielder Laura Blindkilde Brown said. “We were in the Champions League two years ago and we did well there and now it’s about trying to push on there and hopefully win that as well.”
Perhaps the hardest thing for City in the fortnight since they lifted the WSL title has been finding a balance between celebrating and preparing. “We’re just trying to separate both, celebrate first and then really turn our focus on to Wembley,” Blindkilde Brown said.
The 22-year-old has been one of the team’s success stories this season and something of an unsung hero, playing in 20 of their 22 WSL games, starting 18 and demonstrating a maturity beyond her years as she controlled games from the holding midfield role. “I’ve really tried to put a mark on the season and make a name for myself,” she said. “We’ve really built connections in the midfield and every game I’m just improving more and more and there’s still so much for me to improve.”
The England international’s progress is another example of why the future looks so bright for the new champions and the core of their team looks capable of challenging on multiple fronts next term in their second season under the head coach, Andrée Jeglertz. There were four City players in the WSL’s team of the year, Shaw, Yui Hasegawa and Vivianne Miedema joined by the right-back Kerstin Casparij, who topped the league assist charts.
“All the puzzle pieces fitted together this year and also with Andrée coming in and with some incredible recruitment, players-wise, it all just fit; it’s felt so good,” Casparij said at last week’s WSL Football awards in London, where she was accepting Shaw’s WSL player of the year prize on herbehalf.
Casparij does not want that to be the final trophy she gets her hands on this season. “To win a double, after so many years, would be absolutely incredible,” she said. “That’s definitely a goal we have and we’ll give everything to realise that goal.”
