On the right, midfielder Grace Clinton is surrounded by team-mates, having doubled United’s lead, the familiar scent of Wembley Stadium grass wafting around the squad for a third successive season.
On the left, City forward Mary Fowler is hobbling around the opposite corner flag, her right knee bandaged, medical staff flanking either side and storm clouds collecting above.
As an evocative metaphor for the direction of the two rival seasons, this was cruel in its clarity: one Manchester team amid a season blighted by injury, while the other soars higher.
United are seven points clear of City, boast 17 clean sheets across all competitions, have Champions League qualification in sight, and secured a new two-year deal for manager Marc Skinner.
Meanwhile, City are licking their wounds both physically and in their results. They are six key players down following Fowler’s knee injury, which saw her leave the match in the 25th minute. They are headed toward the end of another season without a trophy and need a small miracle for European qualification. Interim manager Nick Cushing is in the dugout, having replaced manager Gareth Taylor in the club’s attempt at silverware in the Women’s League Cup final, only to discover every salvation project has its limits.
Rewind one year and this reality would seem like an odd attempt at an optical illusion.
In March 2024, City were top of the Women’s Super League (WSL), consigning United to a comfortable 3-1 league defeat. United, while on their way to historic FA Cup glory, were galumphingtowards a fifth-placed finish. Skinner’s name was becoming a kind of obscenity in certain pockets of the terraces.
United Women were weeks away from being removed from their £10million ($12.7m) training facilities and into portable cabins to accommodate the men’s senior team while £50m renovations were carried out on Carrington. Weeks away from waving goodbye to goalkeeper Mary Earps to Paris Saint-Germain, forward Lucia Garcia to C.F. Monterrey, club captain Katie Zelem to Angel City, and new minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe admitting in a Bloomberg interview that focus on the men’s first team had prevented him from going into detail with the women’s side.
“It’s the hurt that drives you forward,” Skinner assessed after Sunday’s victory regarding the shift in fortunes. “Even winning the FA Cup last season, we dipped in the league. We’ve got to learn from that. The team have done that fantastically well.”
Pain and education are the apparent secret ingredients to United’s success and while an underlying murmur of inquisition still follows Skinner and United’s hierarchy, something intangible and powerful has grown between the United players over the course of 12 months that could ultimately be season-defining.
“I’ve heard a lot of the things that have been said about what’s happened off the pitch, but what you can see there is a team that have really pulled together, really galvanised and fight for each other,” City interim manager Cushing said of his ...
