Man City's season of drift – where next?

“We’re looking further. Hopefully next season, we can learn, hit the ground running and be up there. This team deserves to win trophies.”

That was winger Lauren Hemp, who spent five months of this season sidelined, speaking to Sky Sports before Manchester City’s penultimate game of the Women’s Super League season against Manchester United, where Champions League qualification was hanging by a thread. City had to win. United only needed a point.

To be in the position where European football is a straight shootout between the two Manchester clubs is rare. This is only the third time City have finished outside the top three (also 2014 and 2022-23).

A dramatic 2-2 draw unfolded at Old Trafford and United snatched their prize, claiming the third and final European spot alongside champions Chelsea and second-place Arsenal, at the direct expense of subdued City.

At full-time, those in red charged towards a celebratory huddle that had broken out near halfway, as if the moment marked an official switch in the WSL’s pecking order. Meanwhile, those in blue looked vacant.

Khiara Keating sunk to the turf. Alex Greenwood was visibly emotional. Yui Hasegawa motionless.

City’s season hinged on winning three points and, having raced into a two-goal lead, they blew it, adding more regret to an already regretful campaign.

Before analysing the mitigating circumstances, of which there are many, it is worth highlighting the drop-off by numbers from a year that began with such promise.

City won just two of their final six games on home turf, failing to win as many home matches in 2025 as they did across 2023 and 2024 combined. They have averaged their second-lowest points-per-game return since 2014, and dropped 11 points from winning positions, their most ever.

Given the margins are so fine any one of those home truths has the potential to damage a season’s prospects of silverware, all three combined has been catastrophic.

It is not the way the club pictured things going after pushing Chelsea all the way in last year’s thrilling title race, finishing runners-up on goal difference. They strengthened in the summer, too, adding world-class forward Vivianne Miedema and maverick talent Aoba Fujino, among others.

But this has been an eventful year for all the wrong reasons. Injuries to key players have torn through the squad – including captain Greenwood, leading scorer Bunny Shaw, Hemp, Miedema and most recently Mary Fowler. Jill Roord, Fujino, Rebecca Knaak, Laura Coombs and Naomi Layzell have also missed a significant number of games.

At points towards the end of the season City were struggling to find 14 available outfield players.

Results nosedived as a result, leading to Gareth Taylor’s sacking in March, five days before the League Cup final which City lost 2-1 to Chelsea – questions over the bizarre timing of the change remain unanswered, while Nick Cushing’s return to take interim charge has done little to spark a meaningful turnaround.

An argument might be made for circumstances actually worsening.

Comparing this season to last, City have the second-worst negative points differential (-12, 55 vs 43), not to mention the complete collapse in three separate cup competitions, all to Chelsea, all in the same 12-day period.

Misfortune or malpractice? Probably both. Cushing has already admitted the injury crisis “100 per cent needs to be examined” in the summer. “We have to look at everything,” he said in April. “We have to look at why we’re fourth in the league, why we’ve not won a trophy and why we’ve not got our best players.”

But an injury emergency, while legitimate mitigation, can only accept so much blame. The decision to allow Chloe Kelly to leave in January and join Arsenal on loan is just one example of an avoidable misstep. The decision to sack Taylor in the lead up to an intense four-game battle with Sonia Bompastor’s Chelsea might be considered another.

Making the right moves in the right moments is the difference between success and failure in a 22-game season. And City’s has been dominated by disappointment in the biggest of them.

Their sole victory in meetings with the division’s ‘big four’ came against Chelsea in the Champions League quarter-finals, which ultimately proved irrelevant because they lost the tie 3-2 overall.

“That might be our problem – we don’t have the toughness and desire to attack the game, however it looks,” Cushing said candidly after exiting the FA Cup to Man Utd last month.

“There are a lot of conversations about the beautiful side of the game – tactics and systems. But you have to win tackles, win duels and compete.”

City have long been masters of the possession game. Even with all their injury woes, they are commendably the team who dominated the majority of passing metrics.

Greenwood played the most successful passes (99) per 90 of any player in the league. Laia Aleixandri, who has recently announced she is leaving the club, made the second-most progressive passes (146). Fowler played the second-most through balls (five). Collectively, their share of possession and passing accuracy ranks comfortably first.

But something is missing. Cushing knows it. A softness exists that opposition teams have exploited all too often.

New football director Therese Sjogren, who will be tasked with finding a permanent managerial replacement this summer, has got her work cut out trying to balance that with rebuilding a bruised squad – without the lure of European football.

Where they turn next will be crucial in terms of which way the axis tips because this, a season of disappointment and drift, is certainly best forgotten.