Charlton Athletic vs Leicester City: The OptaAnalyst Preview

On Saturday, the first BWSL Play-Off Presented by Mercedes will take place at The Valley, with Charlton Athletic and Leicester City squaring off.

The BWSL's expansion from 12 to 14 teams for next season meant there was no automatic relegation from the top tier in 2025-26, with bottom club Leicester having another chance to salvage their status for 2026-27.

From next season onwards, the promotion-relegation play-off will be contested between the BWSL2 runners-up and the second-bottom team in the BWSL.

But for this year, to remain among England's elite, Leicester – who did not win a single away game in the BWSL this season – will have to triumph on the road against a Charlton team that only missed out on the BWSL2 title on the final day, losing 2-0 to Birmingham City.

Charlton Fuelled by Last-Gasp BWSL2 Collapse

Charlton went into that match, on 2 May, knowing a positive result would have sent them up, and a defeat – in the likely event of Crystal Palace beating already-relegated Portsmouth – drop them into third and a play-off.

And so it came to pass, with Wilma Leidhammar's brace sending Birmingham into the promised land, and Palace joining the Blues with a 6-1 rout of Portsmouth.

That remarkably meant Charlton – who had spent 223 days of the season inside the automatic promotion places – were overhauled by an Eagles team that did not end a single day inside the top two until the final matchday.

Charlton were top of the table for 189 days, or 79% of the season, and were inside the top two for 93% of the campaign.

By contrast, Palace spent more days in 11th place (seven) than they did in second (one), but it is Karen Hills' Charlton who still have to do it all over again this weekend.

They went unbeaten through their first 16 matches of the season (W11 D5), with that streak comprising part of the longest undefeated run in BWSL2 history (27 matches).

But they stumbled when it mattered most, losing four of their last six games, while no second-tier team collected fewer points than them since the end of March (four – W1 D1).

If Hills' team are to grasp their second shot at promotion, they will have to get back to what made them serious contenders in the first place – a rock-solid defensive unit. They conceded multiple goals in each of their final four games (nine conceded in total) after only doing so twice in their opening 18 matches (12 conceded in total).

Charlton's 21 goals conceded in the 2025-26 BWSL2 were the fewest in the division, while their eight clean sheets were the joint-most, alongside Birmingham.

The 23.47 expected goals against (xGA) given up by Charlton was the league's second-best figure, behind Birmingham's 18.19, while they also faced the third-fewest shots (227) and the second-fewest attempts on target (71).

And Charlton did not post such mean defensive statistics by dominating the ball, but through good old-fashioned organisation and counter-attacking prowess.

Charlton's average possession share of 40.2% was the second lowest in the BWSL2, while they played the fourth-highest proportion of their passes long (21%).

For Hills, promotion to the top flight would mark the end of a long road, as she is the second-longest serving current BWSL2 manager, behind Sunderland's Melanie Reay, having joined Charlton in March 2021. Since then, she has overseen 58 wins in the second tier, 20 more victories than any other manager at that level.

Jodie Hutton will be Charlton's player to watch, having created the most chances (30), attempted the most shots (33) and scored the joint-most goals (five) of any Addicks player this season.

Twenty of her chances created came from set-pieces, with only Bristol City's Emily Syme (25) creating more from such situations.

Charlton spread the goals out this term, with Gillian Kenney and Lucy Fitzgerald joining Hutton on five, and Emma Bissell and Katie Bradley each netting four times.

Leicester Must End Historic Away Winless Run

Leicester, meanwhile, limp into this crucial game off the back of an 11-match losing streak – the third-longest run of defeats in BWSL history.

Only Doncaster Rovers (17 from 2013 to 2016) and Yeovil Town (12 from 2017 to 2018) have ever endured worse streaks.

Leicester were ninth in the BWSL at the halfway point of the season, having only spent five of the opening 156 days of 2025-26 sitting bottom.

But since falling into 12th place on 8 February, they have never escaped that position, ultimately spending 103 days at the bottom of the pile.

Rick Passmoor's team have been outscored by 28 goals during their losing run (scored four, conceded 32) and finished the season with nine points, at an average of 0.41 per game. Only Bristol City in 2023-24 (six points, 0.27 per game) have ever endured a worse BWSL campaign by either metric.

Losing has truly become a habit for Leicester, as they spent 55% of their gametime in the 2025-26 BWSL behind on the scoreboard – 14 percentage points more than any other team (West Ham United were losing for 41%). The Foxes were only ahead on the scoreboard for 4% of their total gametime, with every other team sitting at 16% or higher.

Perhaps most concerningly for Passmoor ahead of their trip to London, is that Leicester are officially the worst travelling side in BWSL history.

Leicester only earned two points from 11 away BWSL matches in 2025-26 (D2 L9), having also gone through the entire 2024-25 campaign without winning on the road (D3 L8).

The Foxes managed two away victories in all competitions this season, though one of those was against BWSL2 opposition (5-1 versus Ipswich Town in the League Cup last September). The other, 1-0 against London City Lionesses, was also in the League Cup.

Leicester's last away win in the BWSL came all the way back on 28 January, 2024, at Everton. Their 27-game winless run on the road is the worst in competition history, while that victory over the Toffees is also their only triumph in 32 away BWSL matches (D9 L22).

For a Charlton side that proved tough to score against all campaign, Leicester's terrible attacking record will make for encouraging reading.

Leicester’s 11 goals scored in 2025-26 are the fewest by any team in a 22-game BWSL campaign, and they have not scored more than once in a single league game since the final day of 2024-25 (4-2 versus West Ham United). They became the fourth team to go through a full BWSL campaign with netting multiple times in at least one match, and the first since Yeovil in 2018-19.

Thery have also been overly reliant on Shannon O'Brien, who scored five of those 11 goals – a greater proportion of her team's goals than any other BWSL player in 2025-26 (45%).

But they will be glad to have the 24-year-old on their side for this game – she scored with 25% of her total shots in the BWSL this season (5/20), and among all players to net at least five goals, only Liverpool's Beata Olsson (33.3%, 6/18) and Manchester City's Kerolin (30%, 9/30) were more clinical.

Charlton Athletic vs Leicester City Head-to-Head

This will be the first meeting between Charlton and Leicester since the final day of the 2020-21 BWSL2 season, with the Foxes winning 4-0 at the King Power Stadium to hit 50 points in their title-winning campaign.

Indeed, Leicester are unbeaten in their last four matches against Charlton (D2 L2), with their last defeat to the Addicks also coming by a 4-0 scoreline, on the road on the final day of the 2018-19 BWSL2 season.

Unlike the clinical O'Brien, Leicester's Hannah Cain had more shots without scoring than any other player in the BWSL this season (24), but she found the net twice in the last meeting between these teams in 2021.

Leicester also have a miserable record in London more generally – they have played the most BWSL games in the capital without winning (22 – D3 L19) of any team in the competition's history.

Should Charlton emerge victorious, there would be a first for both clubs. They have never been promoted to the BWSL and are aiming to become the 21st different team to compete in the division.

Leicester, meanwhile, have never been relegated from the BWSL, having finished 11th once and 10th on three occasions since their promotion from the second tier in 2021-22.

Word credit: OptaAnalyst