From fourth to first: How Man City became WSL champions-elect ahead of Chelsea showdown

It's hard to understate just what a mess the 2024-25 season was for City. It started strongly, with then-head coach Gareth Taylor overseeing an eight-game unbeaten run, including seven wins, at the beginning of the WSL campaign, as well as a statement victory over Barcelona in the Champions League.

However, injuries would soon prove too crippling for his squad to compete in four competitions, resulting in a period that featured four defeats in six WSL outings and effectively ended a title challenge that had looked serious just before the winter break.

Taylor would leave his post in March, just days before the League Cup final, and interim boss Nick Cushing couldn't inspire a turnaround. City lost four of Cushing's first six games in charge, including that cup final, a Champions League quarter-final and a Manchester derby in the FA Cup. A few weeks later, a draw at Old Trafford would condemn City to a finish outside of the European spots, one the club had explicitly acted to avoid by swapping Taylor for Cushing. A season that had started so well had ended so badly.

But there was a silver lining in that disappointment, one that has shone through this season. With no European football on their agenda, City's schedule was guaranteed to be much lighter than all of their big WSL rivals. While the club would have loved to be in the Champions League knockout stages alongside United, Arsenal and Chelsea, the nine-point gap they've instead established at the top of the table will be a welcome consolation.

"We really must aim for first place," Yui Hasegawa, City's midfield lynchpin, told GOAL before the season, noting the significance of the schedule. "We can focus on the domestic league so I think the chances of winning the title are probably the highest." Her words, thus far, have proved prophetic.

It's not like City haven't had injuries, either. Alex Greenwood, Lauren Hemp, Kerolin, Grace Clinton, Sydney Lohmann and more have all missed chunks of time this term, while Mary Fowler remains sidelined with an ACL injury she sustained at the back end of last season.

The difference this time around is that the removal of that fourth competition has given City that little extra breathing space, meaning there has been more opportunity for key players to rest and recover, plus the squad is a little deeper than it was last year. Adding United States international Sam Coffey, a truly world-class holding midfielder, in the January window has only strengthened it for the run-in, too.

Credit must certainly go to those who have stepped up and ensured absences have not been felt as significantly as they could have been.

Despite being a young player with minimal senior club experience, Jade Rose is enjoying an outstanding first season at City, her composure in the heart of defence helping minimise the negative impact of Greenwood's time on the sidelines.

Laura Blindkilde Brown is another young talent who has stepped up, this time in midfield, meaning the absences of Lohmann and Clinton were nowhere near as detrimental as they could've been. Iman Beney, too, has contributed brilliantly in her first season in Manchester, putting in some flying performances out wide while Hemp was out of action, to show why she is one of the most highly-rated teenagers in Europe.

It's difficult to look through this City squad and pick out a player who hasn't made a meaningful contribution to this incredible season so far, really. That ability to count on everyone - not just the free-scoring Khadija Shaw, the creative brilliance of Vivianne Miedema, the relentlessness of right-back Kerstin Casparij and the consistently excellent Hasegawa - has been vital in the high-energy football that new head coach Andree Jeglertz has brought to the club.

"We have seen so many times this year that the players that have been coming on have given an extra gear to the team," he said last week. "We quite often say everybody counts and we’ve shown that in our game plan and in the contributions from the finishers."

And Jeglertz too deserves credit for how he has managed that rotation and the introduction of his substitutions. The Swede has proven himself excellent at making just enough changes to refresh the team and give players rest when needed, without damaging the cohesion on the pitch, both before and during games, something that is not easy to do.

One only has to look at Chelsea, Sunday's opponents, for evidence of that difficult balancing act. Blues boss Sonia Bompastor is blessed with the biggest and best squad not only in England but perhaps Europe, one stacked with world-class talent. But handling a group like that is not as easy as one might think, not to maintain cohesion, each player's rhythm and ensure individuals are rested enough, all while still getting good performances and results.

That's been evident on a few occasions in Chelsea's season, which has certainly been underwhelming from a WSL perspective so far. This time last year, it was the Blues who were nine points clear at the top of the WSL, having won 12 and drawn just one of their first 13 games in the competition. No one expected Bompastor's side to repeat such an extraordinary campaign, but to be nine points off the pace just 12 months on will be extremely disappointing.

Despite a clear drop in level, particularly in attack, Chelsea still remain a serious threat to City this weekend, particularly having already beaten them twice this season and in all of their last four encounters. But even if they can repeat the trick in Manchester, the title will remain City's to lose. No team has ever built up such an unassailable lead at the top of the WSL and not got their hands on the trophy at the season's end. Right now, regardless of what happens on Sunday, City don't look like they will crumble and buck that trend, either.