Manchester United Women: Defying the Odds in a Challenging Season
“Defy the odds.”
It was supposed to be a rallying cry, not a diagnosis. Four words pinned to Manchester United Women’s 2025-26 season, coined high up in the club’s hierarchy as the team stepped into Europe for the first time and tried to cling on to the coattails of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.
Instead, that slogan has come to sound uncomfortably close to the truth. Because the odds this squad keeps being asked to defy are, in part, built by the club whose badge they wear.
A night that exposed the fault lines
For 79 minutes in Munich, belief felt justified.
Melvine Malard’s early strike dragged the Champions League quarter-final back to 3-3 on aggregate. United, patched up and running on fumes, had Bayern Munich rattled. The spirit that has carried this group beyond realistic expectations for years was suddenly threatening to shove them into the last four of Europe at the first attempt.
Then the second half started.
United came out deeper, slower, clearly burdened by fatigue and an injury list that has turned the substitutes’ bench into a weekly reminder of their limits. Four outfield players were available, one of them 18-year-old Jess Anderson, fresh from her WSL debut at the weekend. Bayern, by contrast, poured forward.
The numbers told the story. Six shots, four on target, in the first half. One shot, none on target, in the second. An xG of 0 after the break. Just 24 per cent of the ball. Bayern racked up nine shots and an xG of 1.45, and with corner after corner raining in, the dam finally burst.
They scored from their 12th and 13th corners of the night, two late blows that sealed a 5-3 aggregate defeat and dragged a season-long weakness into the harshest possible light. United have been vulnerable from set pieces all year. In Munich, the issue became terminal.
You can hold the line only so long. You cannot keep defying it forever.
A season stretched to breaking point
So where does this leave Manchester United Women?
Out of Europe. Out of the FA Cup. Beaten by Chelsea in the League Cup final. Three WSL games left and a scrap on their hands just to get back into the Champions League next year.
Inside the women’s setup and across the wider executive team, one phrase has echoed all season: “The players deserve better.” It is not new, but it has grown louder as the stakes have risen and the margins have tightened.
United finally dipped into the market last summer with intent, bringing in Jess Park, Fridolina Rolfo and Julia Zigiotti Olme. Two other targets slipped away, outbid by rivals. That shortfall sparked a broader conversation: if they could not match the market from within, could they bring money in from outside?
After INEOS bought a minority stake in December 2024, the need to explore fresh investment streams for the women’s team was acknowledged. The urgency, though, has lagged behind the rhetoric. Sir Jim Ratcliffe admitted in 2024 that his attention had been consumed by the men’s side, leaving the women’s long-term plan undercooked.
The strain of this season has underlined the cost of delay. Competing on multiple fronts with a limited squad has pushed players to their physical edge. A March meeting was earmarked as a key moment: senior figures from the women’s setup and club executives would sit down with decision-makers to examine options, including selling a stake in the women’s team to an external investor.
Those around the talks say that idea was quickly shut down. Club sources insist nothing concrete has been formulated. People familiar with the discussions, however, maintain that internal conversations continue, with final recommendations still to be put before the board and owners.
A subtle rebrand of the women’s team has even been floated in those discussions. Senior leadership, for now, have no plans to act on it.
Falling behind a changing market
United are not alone in testing new financial models. Chelsea Women sold roughly 10 per cent to Alexis Ohanian for £20million last May, valuing the team at over £200m. Everton Women confirmed minority investment from GED Investments in December. Sunderland Women have held advanced talks over a majority sale to Sixth Street via its Bay Collective platform.
United’s debate sits in that context, but also in a more uncomfortable one: necessity. Multiple people close to the situation say the club have struggled to keep pace with rising wages and transfer fees. The budget, they argue, simply has not stretched far enough. Club sources counter that this reflects a deliberate, sustainable approach.
Either way, reality bites. At least two signings in January were deals United had originally wanted last summer. One target for the upcoming window remains unconfirmed because the recruitment budget has not yet been nailed down by those controlling the overall finances.
Inside the football department, staff have resorted to sending images of a bare, injury-hit bench to senior figures as a plea for help.
The casualty list is long: Dominique Janssen, Ellen Wangerheim, Anna Sandberg, Leah Galton, Elisabeth Terland and Ella Toone have all been sidelined. Against Bayern, Simi Awujo limped off with what appeared to be a hamstring problem. Training has been stripped back to tactical walkthroughs, analysis and recovery sessions, such is the fear of adding another name to the treatment room.
Investment – but is it enough?
To claim United have not invested at all would be wrong. Under Marc Skinner, now in his fifth year as head coach, the club have made 37 signings. The women’s operating budget has more than doubled, from just under £5m in 2021-22 to £10.7m in 2024-25, according to their most recent accounts.
These figures support the club’s preferred narrative of sustainable growth. Others, inside and outside the camp, see a different distinction: investing sustainably is not the same as investing enough to compete with the elite.
Last season, United’s wage bill stood at £5.88m, just over half Arsenal’s £11.3m. Manchester City, who finished fourth in the WSL, reported operating expenses of £14m – roughly £4m more than United’s budget. Chelsea’s latest accounts are still to come, but their previous season, when they claimed a fifth straight WSL title and reached the semi-finals of both the FA Cup and Champions League, showed an operating budget north of £20m. Double United’s.
On the pitch, Skinner’s record reflects that financial gap and his own contradictions. League finishes of fourth, second (a club best), fifth and third. Four major finals, but only one trophy – the 4-0 FA Cup demolition of Tottenham Hotspur in 2023-24. The other three finals all lost to Chelsea by a combined 6-0.
Across the last two seasons, United have taken three wins from 17 matches against Chelsea, Arsenal and City in all competitions. Against Chelsea alone, they have one victory in 19 attempts, that FA Cup semi-final in 2023-24. Skinner’s personal record against the west London club stands at one win, one draw and 13 defeats in 15 games.
The club handed him a new two-year contract last summer and insist he retains their full backing.
Coaching questions and a missing pathway
Behind that public support, there are sharper private questions.
Some people close to the players and staff doubt Skinner’s ability – or willingness – to develop young talent. They argue he leans heavily towards established, senior players, leaving the club’s pathway from academy to first team underused.
The numbers back up that concern. Before 16-year-old Layla Drury’s WSL debut on February 15, United had given a grand total of 90 league minutes to players under 21 all season. Those 90 minutes came in a 3-0 defeat to Manchester City in November, when 21-year-old Safia Middleton-Patel stepped in for injured first-choice goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce, who had suffered a fractured eye socket.
On matchdays, some within the camp say players receive limited in-game coaching from the touchline and are left to improvise attacking patterns. Skinner rarely leads technical drills himself, delegating to staff as he juggles broader responsibilities. With the squad so stretched, coaches have sometimes joined in training to make up numbers or taken on refereeing roles, rather than focusing solely on instruction.
Others around the team paint a more sympathetic picture. They praise Skinner’s willingness to shield players and staff in public, his communication skills and his defensive organisation. They argue he is more tactically astute than critics allow, especially given the constraints around him, and point to regular one-on-one meetings with players as evidence of his man-management.
Some players thrive with the freedom he gives them on the pitch. Against Europe’s savvier and more powerful sides, that same looseness can look like a flaw. In Munich’s second half, as Bayern turned the screw, United had no attacking solutions and no way out.
Set-piece scars and tactical gambles
Set pieces have become a recurring wound. Long-time goalkeeping coach Ian Willcock, who also oversaw set-piece defending and helped United set a WSL clean-sheet record in 2022-23, left last summer along with several first-team staff. He was replaced by Joe Potts, formerly of Liverpool Women.
Since then, United have repeatedly come undone at dead balls. Chelsea knocked them out of the FA Cup in the fifth round with an extra-time goal from a corner. Bayern did the same in Europe with those two late set-piece strikes.
“We were knocked out in all our games from a set piece, in the FA Cup and now here,” captain Maya Le Tissier told Disney after the defeat. “It’s something we need to work on.”
Skinner’s broader tactical calls have also drawn scrutiny. He used striker Elisabeth Terland as a No 10 in the League Cup final against Chelsea. Wangerheim, signed in January from Hammarby as a centre-forward, has often been deployed on the wing.
Wangerheim said in February that she had been told during negotiations she would play as a No 9. United later added Lea Schuller from Bayern Munich, further crowding the central attacking role. A club source insists Wangerheim was informed from the outset that she would sometimes be used wide.
She herself acknowledged she needed “some training sessions and games” to adjust to the new position. The relentless schedule has not allowed many of either. Competitive matches have arrived faster than adaptation.
A fragile future and circling rivals
United’s first Champions League adventure ended in tears in Munich. The question now is what follows.
Three league games remain: Tottenham Hotspur, Brighton & Hove Albion and, on the final day, Chelsea. To return to Europe, United will almost certainly need to beat a Chelsea side they have defeated once in 19 attempts.
That is the scale of the task. The bigger worry lies just beyond it.
Senior figures at three WSL clubs currently below United have privately identified them as the team to target next season. They see a side punching above its financial weight, operating with tighter transfer budgets and thinner infrastructure than the badge suggests. They smell vulnerability.
Skinner, for his part, leans into the underdog narrative.
“I’m incredibly proud of what my players are doing on resources we have,” he said after the Bayern defeat. “Because we wear Manchester United’s badge, everybody expects us to be the very best team in the world. We have that expectation too. Yet we’ve got to grow because we’re eight years old.
You (can) give me all the flack. That’s no problem, that’s my job. But if we want to compete at this latter stage, we’ve seen what we’ve got to do, as a club. And then it’s our choice now, isn’t it?”
The slogan still hangs over this season: “Defy the odds.” The question now is whether Manchester United choose to change those odds – or keep asking their players to fight a battle the club itself refuses to fund.
