OptaAnalysts' Season in Review
Manchester City End Long Wait, Chelsea Make History and Big Names Say Goodbye: BWSL Season Recap
Another thrilling Barclays WSL season is in the books, with Manchester City halting Chelsea's six-year stranglehold on the title in their first season under Andrée Jeglertz.
City's title was their first in a decade and their second overall, meaning every team to ever win the BWSL has now done so on at least two occasions.
There were several outstanding statistical accomplishments by Jeglertz and his players throughout the course of 2025-26, but there were others across the league, too, from Chelsea overhauling the longest-ever BWSL unbeaten run to London City Lionesses attaining a record points haul by a newly promoted team.
With the help of Opta insights, we review the best facts and figures surrounding the 2025-26 BWSL season and the players that made it another memorable campaign.
Set-Piece Kings City Crowned
City's 10-year wait between winning the title for the first time, under Gareth Taylor in 2016, and reclaiming the trophy this term, is the longest between successes in BWSL history.
And Jeglertz's team did it in style. They led all teams in the BWSL for goals (62), expected goals (58.3 xG) and shots (403) this season.
City spent 189 days top of the table, with eventual third-placed finishers Chelsea at the summit for 50 days. Manchester United led the way for 12 days and Arsenal did so for three.
It was a case of evolution rather than revolution from Jeglertz, as, although his side continued to dominate games with the ball, they made a point of attacking with a more direct style than previous City teams.
Compared to 2024-25, their average possession share dropped from 65.7% to 56.5% and their direct speed increased from 1.3 metres/second to 1.5, but they averaged more goals (2.8 to 2.2) and xG (2.6 to 2.1) per game than they did last season.
City were also historically good from set-pieces, scoring 18 goals from such situations (excluding penalties) throughout the campaign, with 15 of those coming from corners – perhaps the most important was Rebecca Knaak's last-minute winner against Liverpool on the penultimate matchday, which prevented Arsenal from taking control of the title race.
Both of those figures are single-season BWSL records.
Including Knaak's header, City won eight points from goals scored in the final five minutes of games (86th minute onwards), the most of any team.
City's title triumph was also built around a perfect home record, as they became on the second team to win 100% of their home matches in a 12-team WSL season, after Chelsea in 2022-23.
A 13-game winning streak between matchday two and matchday 14 helped City take control of the title race, with that run being the third-longest in BWSL history.
That stretch saw Jeglertz win the BWSL Manager of the Month award in October, November and December, the first time on record (since 2018-19) that anyone had scooped the award in three consecutive months.
And City also boasted a fine record against their closest rivals, collecting the most points in head-to-head matches between the top four teams (12) and scoring nine more goals in those games than anyone else (15, Arsenal second with six). That was a vast improvement on the previous season, when they won just two points from such matches.
A 5-1 victory over Chelsea in February was the standout result of City's season, marking only the second time a side had scored five goals in a BWSL game against the Blues, after Arsenal in October 2019 (5-0).
And in that thumping win, Kerolin became the first player in BWSL history to score a hat-trick against the reigning champions.
Arsenal End on Long Unbeaten Run, Chelsea Make History
After rounding off their campaign with a 4-1 win at West Ham United, City finished four points clear of closest challengers Arsenal, with the Gunners being joined in the Champions League places by Chelsea.
Arsenal ended the campaign on a 17-match unbeaten run (W13 D4), leaving them just two games short of their all-time longest run without defeat in the competition, set between August 2011 and October 2012 (P19 W14 D5).
Their only defeat came away at City, by a 3-2 scoreline on matchday five. It was their fewest losses in a season since 2021-22 (also one), but they drew six games, their most in any BWSL season.
It was also the first time since 2021-22 that the Gunners avoided a single home defeat in a season, and perhaps their most memorable outing at the Emirates Stadium was a 7-0 rout of Leicester City in April – their joint-third biggest victory in the BWSL.
Although Renee Slegers' team failed to deliver silverware following last season's Champions League triumph, the 37-year-old's first full campaign at the helm was largely a positive one.
Following a 5-0 win over West Ham in March, Slegers became the first manager in BWSL history to go unbeaten through their first 16 home matches, and she has since extended that record to 19.
It was a strange season for Chelsea, as Sonia Bompastor's team made a piece of BWSL history early on their title defence, only to finish the campaign well off the pace set by City.
The Blues did not suffer their first defeat until 7 November, going down 1-0 at home to Everton. In their previous league game – a 1-1 draw with Liverpool – they set a new outright record for the longest unbeaten run in BWSL history.
Chelsea's run of 34 games without defeat (W28 D6), incredibly, stretched all the way back to the end of Emma Hayes' reign in the closing weeks of 2023-24 and included their unbeaten 2024-25 campaign under Bompastor.
They surpassed their own competition record, having previously enjoyed a 33-game unbeaten streak between February 2019 and January 2021.
But Chelsea never recovered from back-to-back defeats to Arsenal and City in January and February and ended the season by making a piece of unwanted history, recording their lowest points tally in a 12-team BWSL campaign (49).
Miserable Finish Sees Leicester Finish Bottom
With the BWSL expanding to 14 teams for 2026-27, there was no automatic relegation place in 2025-26, with the bottom team in the top tier instead facing the BWSL2's third-place finishers in a relegation-promotion play-off.
And, for the first time since 2022-23 (when Liverpool finished seventh), it was not the promoted team that propped up the table – London City Lionesses finished in the lofty heights of sixth, with more points than any other promoted team in BWSL history (27).
That left Leicester to finish bottom. It initially did not look that bleak for the Foxes, who only spent five of the opening 156 days of the season in 12th, but after falling to the bottom on 8 February, they never escaped that position.
Having sat in ninth at the halfway stage of the campaign, Leicester lost their final 11 games – the joint-third longest losing run in BWSL history. During that sequence, they only scored four goals and conceded 32.
Leicester's 12th-place finish was confirmed with two matches to spare, following their aforementioned 7-0 loss at Arsenal, and they ended the season having averaged 0.41 points per game.
Only Bristol City in 2023-24 (0.27) have ever accrued fewer points per game in a BWSL season, and they were also the only team to finish with a lower points tally than Leicester's nine, accumulating only six points.
On Saturday, in the Play-Off Presented by Mercedes, it was Charlton who emerged victorious after a tense penalty shootout, meaning the Foxes have now been relegated to the Barclays WSL2, with Charlton Athletic completing the Barclays WSL line up for the 2026/27 season.
Triple Golden Boot for Shaw as City Dominate Awards
In terms of individual accomplishments, City striker Khadija 'Bunny' Shaw led the way, with a 21-goal haul seeing her become the first player to ever win the BWSL Golden Boot in three successive seasons.
She is also the first player in BWSL history to net 20+ times in three different campaigns, having also hit 21 goals in 2023-24 and 20 in 2022-23.
Shaw scored twice against West Ham on Matchday 22 – on what could be her final City appearance as she nears the end of her contract – to bring up a century of BWSL goal involvements (101 – 83 goals, 18 assists).
She is the sixth player to reach that figure, after Vivianne Miedema (138), Beth Mead (124), Beth England (114), Nikita Parris (107) and Fran Kirby (101).
Shaw's City team-mate Kerstin Casparij finished with the joint-most assists, with Aston Villa's Lynn Wilms matching her tally of seven.
Right-back Casparij is only the third defender to record 10+ goal involvements in a BWSL campaign (also three goals), after Ona Batlle in 2022-23 (one goal, nine assists) and Katie McCabe in 2020-21 (four goals, 11 assists).
And between the sticks, City's Ayaka Yamashita kept the joint-most clean sheets, with Chelsea's Hannah Hampton and Man Utd's Phallon Tullis-Joyce also keeping seven each. Yamashita did so in 17 appearances, though, with Hampton needing 18 and Tullis-Joyce 21.
However, Brighton's Chiamaka Nnadozie had an argument for being the BWSL's best goalkeeper in 2025-26, as, according to Opta's expected goals on target (xGOT) model, she prevented more goals than any other goalkeeper (5.9), as well as boasting the best save percentage of any shot-stopper to make 10+ appearances (74.7%).
Big Names Bid Farewell
While Shaw's future remains unclear, Mead is another big name who definitely said her goodbyes last weekend, and she leaves Arsenal as their all-time leading assist provider in the BWSL (50). They are also losing their leading appearance-maker in the competition, in Katie McCabe (181 games).
Sam Kerr has also called time on her stint with Chelsea, having become their all-time leading BWSL goalscorer – she reached 65 league goals for the Blues with her winner against Man Utd on the final matchday.
Man Utd and Tottenham Hotspur have also said goodbye to their most prolific BWSL players, in Leah Galton (35 goals) and England (32), respectively. No other player has scored more than nine BWSL goals for Spurs.
The BWSL has also bid farewell to its leading appearance-maker following Millie Bright's retirement, after 216 games in the competition, while City's Laura Coombs hangs up her boots as one of only two players to make an appearance in 16 BWSL seasons (also Drew Spence).
Bright is one of seven players to appear in at least 15 BWSL campaigns, and another of those – Lucy Staniforth – is also retiring. Aston Villa were the seventh different club she had represented in the BWSL.
All of those departing legends will leave big boots for their teams to fill ahead of the 2026/27 campaign.
Word credit: OptaAnalyst