Manchester City's Cultural Shift: A New Era in the WSL
Manchester City’s culture shift is real. Now comes the hard part: proving it was only the beginning.
For years, City were everyone’s favourite “this could be their season” pick in the WSL. The talent was obvious, the football often sparkling, the league table usually kind. The ending rarely was. They would stumble in the run-in, or implode earlier, leaving Chelsea to collect the ribbons and the headlines.
Jonas Jeglertz walked into that history and quietly tore it up.
A new edge inside the building
Alex Greenwood called it a “shift in culture”. Not a buzzword, but a daily grind. Players changed “the language used” around the training ground, around pressure, around trophies. It was awkward at times, she admitted. Uncomfortable. But that was the point. You don’t dethrone a dynasty by staying in your comfort zone.
Mary Fowler felt the difference too. In previous seasons, she said, there had been “a bit of a lack in the mindset” when it came to truly believing City could win it all. That doubt has gone. Once you’ve lifted the WSL trophy, once you’ve ended a four-year wait for silverware, the conversation changes. So does the mirror.
Now the group looks at itself and sees a champion. Not a plucky challenger. Not a nearly team. A champion that expects to do it again.
Jeglertz could see it almost as soon as the players returned from their short summer break. The mood wasn’t relaxed. It was sharpened.
“I've seen it already in the players,” he told GOAL. Confidence, yes, but not the noisy kind. Calm, curious, asking, “How do we take the next step? What do we do to become a little bit better?” That hunger, he knows, has to last from August to May.
Champions added to a champion’s dressing room
If you want to keep standards high, you sign people who live at that altitude.
Enter Niamh Charles from Chelsea, fresh from five straight WSL titles and a stack of domestic cups. She has spent six years in a dressing room where winning was a weekly expectation, not a seasonal hope. Jeglertz sees leadership in her, the sort that doesn’t always need an armband. The sort that shows up in training on a wet Tuesday and drags others with it.
“That means that she has a little bit of a leader in her,” he said. He plans to use that edge “in sessions and in how you win from one year to the next year.”
Beth Mead brings a different kind of pedigree. Back-to-back European Championship titles with England. A starring role in Arsenal’s 2025 Champions League triumph over Barcelona. She has seen the biggest stages, felt the heaviest pressure. Yet Jeglertz talks about her eyes: still eager, still learning, still chasing.
With those two, City have added not just quality, but experience of living in a world where trophies are expected, not dreamed about.
On paper, the culture, the mentality, the environment are all primed for a title defence. The question now is whether the squad can carry the weight of a busier, harsher season.
The Champions League test – with a thinner squad
One huge advantage last year sat quietly in the background: no Champions League football. While Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United juggled Europe and domestic duties, City had clear weeks, fresher legs, cleaner plans.
That luxury has gone.
The Champions League is back on the calendar and the demands spike with it. Yet the squad has not swelled in the way many expected. Beyond Mead and Charles, the only other senior addition is Carlotta Wamser, a flexible full-back who can operate on either side and cover the gap left by Leila Ouahabi’s departure.
Set that against nine first-team exits and the picture sharpens. This is not a deep rebuild. It’s a calculated tweak.
“The depth is there,” director of football Nicky O’Neill insisted at the end of last season. “It’s not about a squad transformation. It’s about adding in the key positions we need.”
The logic is clear. The risk is, too. Early-season injuries are already biting, most notably to Vivianne Miedema. The Guardian understands she may not return until 2027, a brutal blow for a player signed to be a game-changer in the final third. City did try to move on deadline day but couldn’t push any deals over the line. That alone hints at a concern behind the scenes.
Left-back has been addressed with Charles and Wamser. Mead fills the attacking void after Kerolin’s move to Barcelona. Beyond that, Jeglertz is doubling down on the players already in the building.
The bet on internal growth
Risa Shimizu, back from a loan at Liverpool, will be asked to fortify the full-back rotation. Sydney Lohmann and Grace Clinton are expected to deliver the seasons many thought they would produce last year, before injuries and inconsistency clipped their impact.
Fowler, now heading into her first full campaign after an ACL injury, is a major internal wildcard. She showed flashes of brilliance after returning in February. Give her rhythm and minutes, and she could become one of the league’s defining attackers.
The forward line offers versatility rather than sheer numbers. Mead, Fowler, Lauren Hemp, Aoba Fujino and Iman Beney can all shuffle across positions, several capable of leading the line when needed. That flexibility is one reason City did not feel compelled to bring in a pure understudy to Khadija Shaw just to sit on the bench all year.
Underneath them, the academy conveyor belt is starting to feed the first team. Sacha Lewis, Amelia Oldroyd and Aoibhe Brennan have all signed their first professional deals this summer. Mayzee Davies, already a senior Wales international, did so last year and could edge into the depth chart if opportunities open up.
At the top end, the spine remains intimidating: Shaw, Greenwood, Hemp, Kerstin Casparij, Jade Rose, Yui Hasegawa. When Miedema eventually returns, that starting XI will again look like one of the most formidable in the WSL.
On paper, it’s a squad that should compete. On grass, it will live or die by availability.
Walking the line between belief and brink
Last season, City’s injury record was almost spotless. For a club that has known its share of medical-room misery, that felt like a reset. Replicating that luck – or that management – with Champions League miles on the clock is a different challenge.
“We’ve learned and we will absolutely be ready next season,” O’Neill said. Jeglertz, interestingly, thought the squad was too big last year. For him, the expanded schedule is a blessing, not a threat.
“We have too many good players to play these few games we are playing,” he said back in May. “Next year will be different because it's more games. The squad is built for that.”
The theory is bold. The margins are thin.
There are positions where a single injury could twist the season. There are others where two setbacks would be catastrophic. If Lohmann, now recovering from hip surgery, or Clinton don’t hit the levels expected, the midfield balance shifts. If the players earmarked for “bigger seasons” stall, the load on the stars grows heavier.
City also start the campaign with several players already doubts and Miedema firmly on the sidelines. That is not the platform any manager dreams of when Europe looms and rivals reload.
Yet while some WSL contenders boast deeper benches, they carry their own questions: about culture, about cohesion, about whether their pieces truly fit when the pressure rises. City don’t. Their identity is clear. Their dressing room is aligned. That matters when the season gets messy.
Building a Chelsea-style dynasty in this new, fiercely competitive WSL is a long shot. The league is deeper, smarter, richer. But City have put themselves in the bracket of clubs that should be contesting the biggest trophies every year, not just flirting with the idea.
Last season, they were the best team in England by a distance. That kind of dominance, paired with the confidence of finally getting over the line and the injection of proven winners like Charles and Mead, suggests one thing.
The era of Manchester City waiting a decade for another WSL title should be over. The real question now is how many this group can squeeze out of its window before it closes.
