Manchester City have won the Women's Super League title for the first time since 2016, confirmed on Wednesday evening when Arsenal could only draw 1-1 at Brighton. The result meant City's points total could not be matched, ending a sequence of near-misses that had become one of the more dispiriting narratives in the women's game.
The Guardian reported that City's solitary previous WSL crown came a decade ago, and that the club had accumulated six runners-up finishes in the intervening years — including second place in the abbreviated Spring Series when the league migrated from its summer schedule. It is, by any measure, a long time coming.
Manager Andrée Jeglertz, speaking after the title was confirmed, said he had sensed from early in the season that this would be City's year. The BBC quoted him describing the triumph as an "amazing moment" and crediting his side's ambition, quality and hunger as the decisive qualities across the campaign. There was a conviction in his pre-season assessment, he suggested, that the squad had what was needed to go the distance.
The player-by-player assessments published by the Guardian offer a useful portrait of how City were constructed as a unit. Khadija Shaw is identified as the league's standout individual across the season, while Alex Greenwood claimed her first WSL title after a long career at the top of the women's game. In goal, the Japan international Ayaka Yamashita contributed seven clean sheets in the league — enough to place her in contention for the Golden Glove — and the Guardian noted that her distribution suited the particular style Jeglertz has sought to impose.
Arsenal's failure to win at the Amex was, in isolation, a poor result at a painful moment. Brighton held their own against a side that had been chasing the title deep into May, and the 1-1 scoreline left City's supporters to celebrate from a distance, watching events unfold at another ground entirely. That sense of winning on the sofa rather than on the pitch will fade quickly; the medals and the trophy will not.
City will now look ahead to whatever European football remains in their calendar, as well as the broader ambition of building on this foundation. After ten years and six near-misses, the more pressing question is whether this group can establish the kind of sustained challenge that the club has long wanted to mount. The early signs, at least, are that Jeglertz has built something with more than one season in it.