Future England stars? Khiara Keating, Grace Clinton & nine potential Lionesses catching the eye in the Women’s Super League this season

Set to join up with Chelsea next summer after signing a four-year contract this past summer, Brooke Aspin has been shining for Bristol City ever since she broke into the first team as a 16-year-old, so it’s no surprise that she’s already been snapped up by a top club despite not venturing out of those teenage years just yet.

On loan with the Robins this season after helping them win promotion to the top-flight last term, the young centre-back has already come up with a huge moment as the club bids to battle the odds and avoid relegation. Away at West Ham in early November, she rose highest to meet Megan Connolly’s free-kick and head home a goal that would give Bristol their first win and first points of the campaign.

Aspin tops the charts within the City squad for blocks and interceptions, and she is fantastic with the ball at her feet, too. Underpinning the 18-year-old’s performances this season, though, have been leadership qualities that belie her years. Captain of England’s Under-19s, her character and maturity really stands out, and she has the story of a fighter, too.

Last year, Aspin battled a bone infection, a blood clot and sepsis - and still managed to get back onto the pitch before the end of the season to help Bristol win promotion. “I see life as something that you just have to enjoy, you have to live every moment now,” she told The Guardian. “As soon as I walk out on that pitch, then I’m loving every moment because I’m playing what I love and I may not have got that opportunity before.”

Another young talent on Chelsea’s books, Aggie Beever-Jones has represented the Blues since she was a young girl and this season, after loan spells with Bristol City and Everton, she’s starting to get her first-team opportunities, scoring three goals in just four substitute appearances in the WSL so far. She’s averaging a goal every 21 minutes.

“She stretches teams, she gets in behind,” Chelsea boss Emma Hayes said in October after the 20-year-old had netted the first of those three. "She has some work to do to know when to press, where to press, when not to double down, all of that detail. But she’s always in our offices asking for analysis.”

Beever-Jones is quick, she’s deceptively strong and she’s versatile, too, capable of playing on either wing or as a central striker. Throw in her desire to make things happen and her unpredictability, and she’s becoming a fantastic impact substitute for the reigning WSL champions to turn to.

When GOAL spoke to Aston Villa boss Carla Ward earlier this year, she didn’t hold back in her praise for Laura Blindkilde Brown, the young midfielder who has been a regular starter for the Midlands club since she was just 18 years old.

“Laura is one of the biggest talents I've ever worked with. She really is,” she said. “If she can start believing it… Because she has no idea just how good she can be and how good she is already. You have to keep reminding her every single day because she's just one of a kind. I've literally never worked with a youngster like her.”

Those words say it all, really. It’s no surprise, then, that the Danish Football Association have tried to talk her into representing her mother’s side of the family, whom she wears the name ‘Blindkilde’ on the back of her shirt for. But the 20-year-old told GOAL last year that her dream is to play for England, the team she has long represented at youth level.

An attack-minded midfielder who can also play out wide, Blindkilde Brown has bundles of energy, meaning she presses well, she is excellent at picking up spaces where she can hurt opponents and is generally just a bit of a nuisance for defenders. Her footwork and her love of the game, no doubt strengthened by a heart condition that almost forced her to stop playing a few years ago, make her a joy to watch.

A name that many have been keeping an eye on for a while, Grace Clinton threatened time and time again to break through at Everton, but the young midfielder sat largely on the fringes of the squad before joining Manchester United last year.

Compared to Ella Toone by Red Devils boss Marc Skinner due to her ability to “make a magic moment”, first-team opportunities were going to be even harder to come by at a club that was battling for Champions League football (an injury didn’t help either), but Clinton has been able to thrive in her two loan spells since changing clubs in the north west.

After scoring six goals in 12 games to help Bristol win promotion from the second tier last term, the 20-year-old has been so good for Tottenham at the start of this new season that she was called up by Wiegman to be part of the squad for England’s games against Belgium in October.

Operating both as a left winger and a No.10 for Spurs, head coach Robert Vilahamn believes that a wide role is good for Clinton at this stage in her career as it is allowing her to find pockets of space gradually. He has no doubt what lies ahead for her, though. “In the future, she’s going to start as a No.10 in the national team,” he said last month. “I’m quite sure of that.”

The latest promising prospect to emerge from Sheffield United’s talent factory, Mia Enderby has been on the radar of the WSL’s top clubs for quite a while now. In the summer, she opted to make that jump up to the top-flight from the second tier, and she chose to do it with Liverpool.

It felt like a smart decision straight away, a club where the 18-year-old could steadily continue her development and complement it with some first-team opportunities, the likes of which might not have been possible if she had landed at a top-four side, for example. As time has passed, that view on the move has only strengthened.

Liverpool boss Matt Beard is doing an excellent job of slowly introducing the explosive winger to the WSL and she is taking her chances to show glimpses of what she can do already. The most exciting moment so far actually came in the Continental Cup, where Enderby knocked a cheeky flick around Steph Houghton, latched back onto the ball and then drilled it beyond Man City goalkeeper Sandy MacIver for her first goal for the Reds.

With more minutes, more experience and more opportunities, we’re only going to see more moments like that from a direct, confident and tricky forward who finds herself in a fantastic environment to progress.

Anyone who has watched England’s youth teams over the years will know what an exciting prospect Missy Goodwin is. Blessed with real pace and possessing impressive focus, she is always ready to pounce when the opportunity presents itself.

The 20-year-old presses well, she likes to use her speed to nip in and steal the ball if an opponent is just a little bit sloppy with a pass, and she is ready and raring to go if there is a chance for her team to counter-attack.

Goodwin is starting to show that at senior level with Leicester, too. Initially joining on a short-term deal at the start of 2022, she has impressed so much that she signed a new long-term contract extension with the Foxes earlier this year. “My time at Leicester so far has been huge for my development, so having the chance to sign a new deal was a no-brainer really because it can allow me to keep improving,” she said.

What’s particularly exciting is that it feels like Goodwin can yet add goals to her game. She gets into good positions and has the directness and confidence to be a serious threat in the box. Willie Kirk, her coach at Leicester, has even noted as much. Don’t be surprised if that becomes a serious area of development over the next few years.

Manchester City can boast two senior international goalkeepers in their squad, both of whom are Olympians, in England’s Ellie Roebuck and Scotland’s Sandy MacIver – yet it is 19-year-old Khiara Keating who has started every match in between the sticks in the WSL this season.

The teenage prospect has played sporadically for City’s first team over the last few years and has had two loan spells lower down the pyramid, too. It’s clear that she has drawn on those experiences in the early stages of this new campaign where she has found herself to be first-choice under Gareth Taylor.

There have been real highs for Keating, such as the flurry of fantastic saves she made against Chelsea, the outstanding penalty stop against Arsenal and her first senior England call-up. But, as is football, there will also be some lows, with a mistake against the Gunners, which cost City a result, provoking a devastating reaction from the teenager. All of that is going to help her develop even more, though, and help her build on a really strong platform she has already set for herself.

“She makes saves, she comes for crosses, she's got safe hands, she's good with her distribution - both short and long,” Taylor said earlier this season, heaping praise upon the teenager after she played a starring role in a draw with Chelsea. “She's young so she's going to make some mistakes, some errors, and can get a bit excited at times, but she's great to work with and I thought her performance was brilliant.”

Aspin might be set to join up with Chelsea once this season ends, but Bristol have another talented teenage defender in their midst, and they’ll hope they can keep hold of Naomi Layzell for a little longer than her team-mate, even if there are sure to be WSL rivals keeping tabs on the 19-year-old.

No one has made more clearances in England’s top-flight this season than Layzell, who has also won the ball back more often than anyone else in Bristol colours. She’s been a key player for the Robins ever since her debut came at the age of 16, and that will be the case again this year as the newly-promoted side try to defy the odds and stay up.

Once you learn that the teenager can play at centre-back, left-back or as a holding midfielder, it’s no surprise that her understanding of the game is excellent. Given how long she has been playing at senior level, she is incredibly mature, too. Layzell has a great foundation set for her, then, and with so many years ahead of her in her career, she’s only going to get better.

Someone who has already been an England captain at youth level, that honour speaks a lot to Maisie Symonds' character, a strength bolstered by a fighting tale she opened up about recently. The midfielder became so ill with glandular fever and hepatitis during the summer of 2022 that her spleen ruptured. Recovering just as new boss Mel Phillips came in at Brighton, it left her with a race against time to prove she was worth a new deal. That she did so tells you plenty about her quality as a footballer, too.

"It wasn't long before Mel told me she believed in me and the club offered me a new contract,” Symonds told Mail Online. "The club has really supported me. Back then, I was nowhere near my best, nowhere near my fittest, but they put a lot of faith and trust in me. Hopefully I can pay them back for that."

It feels like the 20-year-old is already starting to do that, playing her part for a Brighton team that has already secured surprise results against Man City and Manchester United this season, while also giving Chelsea a bit of a scare.

Symonds works incredibly hard in the middle of the park, but it’s when she gets on the ball that she really catches the eye. She’s excellent at picking out a pass, with her vision and ability to spray the ball around allowing her to start attacks from anywhere on the pitch. She appears to be well on her way back to that best level from what she’s shown in the early part of this season.