On-fire Mary Fowler holds the key to Man City's WSL title bid after ousting Lionesses star Chloe Kelly from the line up

When Fowler returned to Manchester after last summer’s Women’s World Cup, it felt like she had to be given a shot in the team. The previous year, in her first season at the club, the forward had struggled for opportunities, failing to start a single league game after joining from Montpellier. However, her starring role in Australia’s run to a World Cup semi-final proved that she could do it on the biggest stage and, in turn, she found herself in the starting line up for City's first six games of the WSL season.

But City have a very competitive squad, and she slipped out of Gareth Taylor’s XI in mid-November, not to return until mid-March. Kelly and Lauren Hemp locked down the wide roles as Taylor alternated between Filippa Angeldahl and Laura Coombs to join Yui Hasegawa and Jill Roord in the midfield, while Jess Park took her chance to secure the latter’s position after a devastating ACL injury. Fowler was left on the sidelines.

“I think I always try to have the mindset that, whether I'm on the field or off the field, I just try to bring my best to the team,” she told Sky Sports on Sunday, speaking of that time out of the team. “Having been on the side for a while, I just tried to stay focused in training and make sure I could be a good team-mate on the sides. [I would] just believe that I was going to get my chance and make sure that when I did, that I was ready for it.”

That chance came in March, when Fowler started in place of Kelly on the right in an FA Cup quarter-final against Tottenham. The result didn’t go the Cityzens’ way, Spurs emerging victorious on penalties, but there was a lot to like in Fowler’s performance and Taylor has stuck with her ever since, a decision which surprised some in England simply because it meant dropping a player of Kelly’s calibre, a Lionesses star.

"It's just basically we have good players,” Taylor said of Kelly’s place on the bench. “We put Mary into the FA Cup game, she scores. She scores against Brighton last week. Mary's a very good player. Of course, the demands are really high of what we ask for, in kind of goals and assists from those players, without it being all about that. But Mary has taken her opportunity and now what Chloe has to do is work hard every day in training to be ready.”

While many focused on Kelly’s lack of game time, Fowler was justifying her place and then some. In her six games back in the City XI, the Australia star has scored three goals and provided three assists, helping her team win all five league games to assume a six-point lead at the top of the WSL table.

“She’s a top player and a top person to work with as well,” Taylor said recently. “As well as all of her quality that she has - she's one of the best finishers I've seen and we're still waiting for her to really unleash with the goals - I think the biggest compliment you can pay to Mary is she is really reliable with and without the ball. She works so hard for the team defensively. She's reliable in possession and we need that. She's reliable with the ball, she looks after the ball in one-v-one situations.

“She's a unique kind of person and unique player really, Mary. She's very calm, very level-headed and doesn't get too excited about praise and doesn't get too down in the low moments. That's a really good way of being. We've given her a platform to play. She feels more comfortable now probably than she had done previously, and we're seeing good things from her."

What Fowler has brought to the team since her return to the XI is something different, too. Hemp and Kelly are versatile players, as showcased by their abilities to play through the middle, but they often perform as more traditional wingers in this City team, the type that will stick to their side and use their speed to drive at the full-back with the aim of whipping in a cross.

Fowler, meanwhile, is a little less direct, she likes to drift inside and she gets more involved in the build-up play as a result, often resulting in her causing a threat in central areas rather than just on the wing. An ability to use both feet brilliantly certainly helps her, too. Indeed, her first goal against Bristol last Sunday, a fierce strike into the top corner from the edge of the box, was with her left foot while her second, a sweeping finish from Hemp’s cross, came off her right.

"She can go both ways, that's the thing with Mary - left foot, right foot - and obviously that then allows Lauren to drift sometimes and she'll end up on the right,” Taylor noted earlier this season. “She's a really good team player is what I would say with Mary. She's really good for the team."

That variety that Fowler brings to the table is going to be even more important to City in the WSL title run-in after the news that Shaw will be out for the rest of the season. The team does not have another natural No.9 to take her place or anyone with the same aerial prowess, so those dangerous high crosses the wingers would normally put into the box for Shaw to attack will be nowhere near as effective. City are going to have to adapt.

Fortunately, their players are adaptable. Hemp, Kelly and Fowler can all play anywhere across the front line, with the latter also very capable in a No.10 role. That fluidity was on show against Bristol, where Kelly lined up as the No.9, and it saw plenty of chances fall to all three players.

“I love the fact that they have that fluidity and they have that freedom,” Taylor told Sky Sports, noting how Fowler “definitely” took control in central areas as a result. “Lauren likes to play in all of the positions, Chloe was providing a threat for us as a number nine and she got into good positions in the first half, but of course, she's probably going to feel a lot more comfortable on the right side - and we want them to be comfortable. When I was speaking to them on the sidelines, they're very much like, ‘I don't mind, I'll play nine or something else', and that's great. They understand the role that's required from them and in the second half tonight, they did it really well."

"We have attacking players that are all capable of getting goals,” Fowler added. “I think today, our front three just moved around quite a bit, tried to do something different. I think it's particularly difficult to get goals against a team that sits quite a bit, so I think we just had to try and find solutions throughout the game.”

All three have to keep that creative thinking up in these final two games of the season if City want to win the WSL for the first time in eight years. On Sunday, they take on third-placed Arsenal in an extremely tough penultimate fixture before travelling to Aston Villa on the final day. Title rivals Chelsea slipped up against Liverpool on Wednesday to give City a real cushion at this late stage, but Taylor's side cannot get complacent as one mis-step of their own and the Blues are right back in it.

There's still a chance it could come down to goal difference, too, making the contributions of City’s new-look attack all the more important. Fortunately, even without Shaw, the club has plenty of quality. In Hemp, they have a consistent livewire on the left; in Kelly, they have someone who will be itching to remind everyone of her ability after some time out of the team; and in Fowler, they have a prodigious young talent who is finally getting to show the WSL just how good she is.