“We look further. Hopefully we can learn next season, run the ground and be there. This team deserves to win trophies.”
That was winger Lauren Hemp, who brought offside for five months of this season and spoke with Sky Sports before the penultimate match of Manchester City of the SUPER League season of the ladies against Manchester United, where the qualification of the Champions League hung on a thread. City had to win. United only needed one point.
To be in the position where European football is a straight shooting between the two Manchester clubs, is rare. This is only the third time that City has ended outside the top three (also 2014 and 2022-23).
A dramatic 2-2 draw unfolded in Old Trafford and United, and the third and last European place claimed next to Champions Chelsea and second place Arsenal, at direct costs of modest city.
On full -time, those stormed into the red on a festive Huddle that had almost broken out halfway, as if the moment marked an official switch in the pecking order of the WSL. In the meantime, those in blue saw empty.
Khiara Keating Sund to the Turf. Alex Greenwood was visibly emotional. Yui hazegawa immobile.
The City season depended on winning three points and, after being raced in a lead of two goals, she blew it, and added more regret to an already regrettable campaign.
Before they analyze the mitigating circumstances, of which there are many, it is worth emphasizing the drop-off by figures from a year that started with such a promise.
City won only two of their last six games on Home Turf, and failed to win so many home games in 2025 as combined in 2023 and 2024. They have on average on the second lowest points per game return since 2014 and have fallen 11 points from winning positions, their most ever.
Since the margins are so good, one of those home truths can damage the prospects of a season on silverware, all three combined catastrophic.
It is not the way the club imagined that things are going after he had pushed Chelsea completely into last year's exciting title race and finished second place on target difference. They were also strengthened in the summer and added, among others, Vivianne Miedema and Maverick Talent Aoba Fujino.
But this has been an eventful year for the wrong reasons. Injuries to important players are torn by the team – including Captain Greenwood, leading Scorer Bunny Shaw, Hemp, Miedema and recently Mary Fowler. Jill Roor, Fujino, Rebecca Knaak, Laura Coombs and Naomi Layzell have also missed a considerable number of competitions.
At points towards the end of the season, City struggled to find 14 available outfield players.
As a result, the results are natigating, which led to Gareth Taylor's looting in March, five days before the League Cup final which city lost 2-1 to Chelsea -Questions about the bizarre timing of the change remain unanswered, while the return of Nick Cushing to take interim load has done little to Wikkelen Wikkelen.
An argument can be put forward for the circumstances that actually deteriorate.
City compares this season to long and has the second worst negative point difference (-12, 55 versus 43), not to mention the full collapse in three separate cup matches, all with Chelsea, all in the same period of 12 days.
Accident or malpractice? Probably both. Cushing has already admitted that the injury crisis must be investigated “100 percent” in the summer. “We have to look at everything,” he said in April. “We have to see why we are fourth in the competition, why we didn't win a trophy and why we don't have our best players.”
But an injury emergency, although legitimate mitigation, can only accept so much debt. The decision to allow Chloe Kelly to leave in January and to become a member of Arsenal on loan, is just an example of an avoidable misstep. The decision to dismiss Taylor in the run-up to an intense four-game battle with Chelsea of ​​Sonia Bompastor can be considered another.
Making the right movements in the right times is the difference between success and failure in a 22-game season. And City's is dominated by disappointment with the largest of them.
Their only victory in meetings with the 'Big Four' of the division came against Chelsea in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, which ultimately turned out to be irrelevant because they lost the tie 3-2 in general.
“That is perhaps our problem – we don't have the toughness and the desire to attack the game, how does it look like,” Cushing said frankly after leaving the FA Cup to Man Utd last month.
“There are many conversations about the beautiful side of the game – tactics and systems. But you have to win tackles, win duels and compete.”
City has long been masters of the ownership game. Even with all their injury misery, they are commendable to the team that dominated the most passing statistics.
Greenwood played the most successful passes (99) per 90 of each player in the competition. Laia Aleixandri, who recently announced that she is leaving the club, made the second most progressive passes (146). Fowler played the second most by balls (five). Together their share in possession and passing accuracy first scores comfortably.
But something is missing. Cushing knows. There is a softness that opposition teams have exploited all too often.
New football director Therese Sjogren, who will find a permanent management replacement this summer, has taken her work out to balance that with rebuilding a bruised team – without the temptation of European football.
Where they will change next time, there will be crucial in terms of which way the ashes the tips, because this, a season of disappointment and drift, can certainly be best forgotten.