WSL’s Season-Defining XI: Key Signings and Standout Performers
The WSL’s season-defining XI: signings, shape‑shifters and a striker at her peak
Nnadozie changes Brighton’s reality
Some transfers tweak a team. Chiamaka Nnadozie changed Brighton’s entire outlook.
Signed last summer, the Nigeria international arrived on the south coast with a reputation for aggressive positioning and a fearlessness that instantly appealed to Dario Vidosic. That trait has remained at the heart of her game in England, pushing Brighton’s defensive line higher and giving her back four a goalkeeper who attacks space, not just shots.
The impact is written in the numbers. Brighton shipped 41 goals in 22 league games in 2024-25. This season, with Nnadozie behind them, that dropped to 27 in the same number of matches. Same league, same pressure, radically different outcome. Her shot-stopping has been spectacular, but it’s the authority with which she commands her area that has dragged the Seagulls into a new defensive era.
Casparij, the full-back who defines a champion
On the other side of the table, Kerstin Casparij has become the embodiment of Man City’s title-winning edge.
No player in the WSL delivered more assists this season. The Dutch full-back racked up seven, added a career-best three league goals and seemed to live permanently in the most dangerous channels of the pitch. She thrived in Andrée Jeglertz’s more direct, front-foot approach, driving City forward with the kind of conviction that unsettles even the best-organised defences.
The telling detail? Seven of her 10 combined goals and assists came against the rest of the top four. When the games mattered most, Casparij kept turning up.
She did it without sacrificing the dirty work. Relentless up and down the right flank, she gave City width, energy and security in one package, a two-way force in a campaign that finally ended their 10-year wait for the title.
Koga, Spurs’ teenage cornerstone
Tottenham took a calculated gamble on Toko Koga. Within months, it looked like a masterstroke.
The Japan international arrived as a relatively unknown 19-year-old centre-back and left the season as one of the division’s standout defenders. Calm on the ball, aggressive in duels, positionally sharp, she quickly became the pillar of a Spurs back line that had long cried out for authority.
Her performances earned her the club’s Adults Supporters’ Player of the Season award before her 21st birthday. That tells its own story. Koga reads the game with the composure of a veteran and carries herself with a maturity that belies her age. If this is her baseline, the ceiling for player and club is frighteningly high.
Rose grows into City’s spine
If Koga was a revelation, Jade Rose was City’s quiet revolution at centre-back.
In her first senior season of football, the Canada international needed only a few weeks to force her way into Jeglertz’s starting XI. Once she did, she refused to give the shirt back, playing every minute from that point as City marched to their first WSL crown in a decade.
Her blend of composure, timing and physical presence gave City’s attacking juggernaut the platform it needed. Team-mates see it every day; Khadija Shaw, who battles elite defenders weekly, has already spoken about Rose as a future candidate to be one of the best in the world. On this evidence, that doesn’t sound premature. It sounds like a roadmap.
McCabe, Arsenal’s Swiss army knife
Katie McCabe spent the season putting out fires all over Arsenal’s pitch.
Left-back, centre-back, midfield – wherever Jonas Eidevall’s injury-ravaged defence sprang a leak, McCabe stepped in. The Gunners still ended up with the meanest back line in the division, despite constant personnel changes. That doesn’t happen without a player who understands space, danger and tempo as well as she does.
In her natural role at left-back, McCabe delivered her usual blend of bite and craft. She ranked in Arsenal’s top five for key passes and accurate passes in the final third, while also sitting among the leaders for tackles, clearances, interceptions and blocks. That’s not versatility for its own sake; it’s influence in every phase of play.
No wonder so many Arsenal fans winced at the thought of her leaving at the end of the campaign, with a move to domestic rivals Man City a very real possibility. Losing her is one thing. Watching her strengthen a direct title rival is quite another.
Hasegawa, the metronome who replaced a star and became one
Yui Hasegawa makes elite football look deceptively simple.
Once a No.10, she arrived at Man City in 2022 and was immediately recast as a deep-lying playmaker, asked to fill the void left by Keira Walsh’s move to Barcelona. It was a bold call. It has turned into one of the defining decisions of City’s modern era.
Hasegawa now operates as one of the best holding midfielders in the world, knitting together City’s structure with her reading of the game, economy of touch and astonishing ability to cover ground. This season, as City finally reclaimed the WSL title, her influence only grew. She broke up play, dictated tempo and added more threat in the final third, becoming the heartbeat of a side that simply refused to let go of the ball or the initiative.
Her new contract, running until 2029, feels less like a renewal and more like a statement of intent.
Miedema, reborn between the lines
Vivianne Miedema’s reinvention has taken time. This year, it clicked.
Gareth Taylor first experimented with her as a deeper midfielder, but injuries and an awkward balance meant the idea never fully settled. Under Jeglertz, the structure finally made sense. Miedema operated between the lines, linking midfield and attack, and the whole City front unit sharpened around her.
She finished the campaign with 15 combined goals and assists, the third-best tally in the league, despite missing the final three matches. The partnership with Shaw became one of the WSL’s most destructive duos, Miedema drifting into pockets, threading passes, then arriving in the box with the timing that once made her the division’s deadliest No.9.
After three years disrupted by injuries, the WSL’s all-time top scorer looks like herself again. That changes the landscape for everyone.
Russo, the hybrid forward Arsenal needed
No one was dislodging the league’s standout No.9 from this XI, but Alessia Russo still demanded inclusion. Conveniently, Arsenal gave her a second role.
Used both as a striker and a No.10, Russo evolved into the perfect foil for Stina Blackstenius. She finished with 13 goals and six assists, a direct goal involvement tally bettered only by Shaw. From that slightly deeper role, she linked play, pressed aggressively and dragged defenders into places they didn’t want to go, opening lanes for the Sweden international to enjoy her best WSL season yet.
Her adaptability matters for the future as much as the present. With Blackstenius extending her stay and Michelle Agyemang waiting in the wings, Russo’s comfort operating behind a central striker gives Arsenal tactical flexibility for years to come.
And when she leads the line herself, she looks increasingly ruthless. Her finishing, movement in the box and range of goals have all gone up a level in what stands as the most prolific campaign of her career.
Hanson, a winger turned penalty-box predator
Kirsty Hanson’s season reads like a positional experiment that turned into a revelation.
After years as a winger, she shifted centrally at 27 under Natalia Arroyo and promptly delivered the best goal-scoring return of her career: 12 goals in 21 games, enough to finish third in the Golden Boot race.
The numbers behind it are even more striking. Those 12 goals came from an expected goals figure of just 6.7. Her shot conversion rate – 21 per cent – put her ahead of established finishers like Russo, Shaw and Sam Kerr, and behind only a handful of players with at least 10 attempts.
She attacked space with the instincts of a seasoned centre-forward, timing her runs and punishing even half-chances. One season in, the question is no longer whether she can play through the middle. It’s how far this new version of Hanson can go.
Shaw, the standard for the modern No.9
Khadija Shaw didn’t just win another Golden Boot. She set the standard for what a modern centre-forward should be.
Twenty-one goals in 22 games delivered her third straight scoring crown and, at last, a WSL winners’ medal. The numbers are brutal. The performances, even more so. Defenders couldn’t cope with her blend of power, movement and intelligence. When City hammered Tottenham 5-2 in March, Shaw rattled in the fastest hat-trick in WSL history, a display so complete that Spurs boss Martin Ho walked into his press conference and called her “the best forward in the world by a mile”.
She scores with her head, with either foot, with her back to goal or running in behind. She links play, bullies centre-backs and still finds the energy to press and defend her own box at set pieces. This is a complete No.9 at the peak of her powers.
Which is exactly why the prospect of her leaving City feels so baffling from the club’s perspective.
Hemp, the relentless creator
Lauren Hemp’s season won’t be remembered for gaudy goal numbers, but strip away the scoreboard and you find one of the most influential players in the league.
A fixture in City’s starting XI despite fierce competition out wide, Hemp led the WSL for key passes and big chances created. She finished with six assists, a tally only bettered by Casparij and Aston Villa’s Lynn Wilms, and spent most weekends terrorising full-backs, dragging entire defensive units out of shape.
When City needed control, she held the ball. When they needed incision, she drove straight at the heart of the opposition. And when Jeglertz demanded more defensive graft, she delivered, tracking back, doubling up and doing the unseen work that underpins a title charge.
City’s first WSL triumph in 10 years didn’t rest on one star. It rested on a spine of excellence, a cast of signings who hit instantly and a core of players prepared to adapt and evolve. From Nnadozie’s transformation of Brighton to Shaw’s ruthless finishing and Hasegawa’s quiet dominance, this season’s standout XI didn’t just win games.
They shifted the standards of what the WSL now expects.
