Manchester City Women’s 2024 in review | OneFootball

It’s certainly been a year to remember for Manchester City Women.

As the curtain falls on 2024, it’s time to look back at the rollercoaster past 12 months which provided plenty of highs and the occasional low as Gareth Taylor’s side once again battled for major honours.

At the end of the 2023/24 campaign, the Blues matched our best-ever Barclays Women’s Super League points tally but were denied the title on goal difference.

Regardless, we carried our momentum into 2024/25 and welcomed new faces on and off the pitch while recording a swathe of famous triumphs.

Here we examine the key talking points from the past year.

RECORD

Across 2024, City won 29 of our 36 assignments in all competitions – registering a win percentage of 80.5%.

In the WSL, we’ve triumphed in 18 of our 22 matches, collected four wins across six collective FA Cup and League Cup outings before winning seven of our eight Women’s Champions League fixtures.

Of those matches overall, we drew once and lost only six.

TREND SETTERS

As the Blues relentlessly pursued the WSL crown, we produced a division-breaking winning streak which stretched into the new year.

Our 5-0 victory over West Ham in April represented our 13th triumph in succession which surpassed our own WSL record of 12.

We then stretched the streak to 14 consecutive wins with a success at Bristol City before narrowly losing 2-1 to Arsenal.

There were also a swathe of individual moments of brilliance too, as Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw became the Club’s highest-scoring women’s player.

By scoring our third in a 3-1 win over Manchester United in March, she raised her overall tally to 68 – surpassing Georgia Stanway’s 67.

Bunny has since raised her collective goal haul to 86 in all competitions for City.

WATCH: Classic Highlights: City 3-1 Manchester United (2024)

MEMORABLE WINS

Among our 29 victories in 2024, there have been a vast number of memorable successes which will live long in the memory.

In February, City recorded a hard fought 1-0 away win at Arsenal in the FA Cup before following it up with a triumph by the same scoreline at Kingsmeadow over Chelsea in the WSL.

Laia Aleixandri’s strike was enough to beat the Gunners before Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw’s run and finish downed the reigning champions in the capital.

A month later, Jess Park scored twice before the Jamaican became our highest-ever goalscorer in a 3-1 victory over Manchester United at the Etihad Stadium.

WATCH: Highlights: City 2-0 Barcelona

Then, in October, Taylor’s team produced a sublime display to beat Champions League holders Barcelona 2-0 in front of a record Joie Stadium crowd of 5,508.

GOLDEN GLOVE

Khiara Keating continued her remarkable rise in 2024 having broken into our first-team at the start of the 2023/24 season.

She collected eight WSL clean sheets in 2024, with five of those coming after the turn of the year last term.

Those shutouts contributed to the England youth international winning the division’s Golden Glove award in May having recorded a total of nine in 2023/24.

This included a crucial clean sheet in the 1-0 victory over Chelsea in February where she made a number of fantastic saves to keep the Londoners out.

WATCH: Bunny Shaw’s goalscoring masterclass

SHARP SHOOTER

Throughout the calendar year, perhaps it’s no surprise Bunny Shaw is our top goalscorer across the past 12 months.

In all competitions, she has scored 26 goals in 2024 which helped her to individual accolades.

The Jamaican’s 12 in 2024 last term helped her to the Barclays Women’s Super League Golden Boot as she bagged a collective 21 goals in 2023/24.

In 2024, she has also scored two WSL hat-tricks, which sees her at the top of the division’s all-time treble scorer chart – surpassing team-mate Vivianne Miedema to the table’s summit.

FAREWELL

Not only did City host a swathe of memorable moments in 2024, we also bid farewell to our legendary ex-captain Steph Houghton who retired at the end of last season.

The Club’s former defender ended her illustrious career as our highest appearance holder with 242 and having led us to eight major honours, including the 2016 WSL title.

It wasn’t just Houghton who departed with our best wishes as well to Deyna Castellanos, Demi Stokes, Esme Morgan, Filippa Angeldahl and Ruby Mace who also left for pastures new.

EUROPEAN RETURN

Despite narrowly missing out on the WSL title, our second-place finish meant we reached the Champions League qualifying round for the first time since 2022.

Since then, we’ve performed incredibly on the continent, first by securing passage into the group stages with an 8-0 aggregate victory over Paris FC over two legs.

We then opened our Group D journey with a 2-0 win over Barcelona before two respective victories of St Polten and Hammarby – which sealed our place in the last-eight.

With qualification to the quarter-finals already secured, a threadbare City team lost 3-0 to Barcelona in our last group assignment.

WATCH: Highlights: St Polten 2-3 City

DEBUTANTS

The Academy pathway from our youth teams into our first-team is incredibly vital to the Club.

And this has been trodden in 2024 with Lily Murphy, Codie Thomas and Eve O’Carroll all making their senior bows this calendar year.

WATCH: Murphy on Chloe Kelly’s important advice

What’s more, Gracie Prior, Murphy and Thomas all penned their first professional contracts since the end of the 2023/24 season.

All four have impressed when featuring for Taylor’s team this year, with blisteringly quick winger Murphy scoring in our 2-0 win over St Polten in the Champions League in December.

ARRIVALS

City also welcomed a new Director of Football to the Joie Stadium in December 2024, with Therese Sjogran fulfilling the position after her illustrious spell at Rosengard.

It was there where she helped the Swedish outfit to four Damallsvenskan titles as Sporting Director.

Taylor also signed several fresh faces in both the January and summer windows including Laura Blindkilde Brown, Tara O’Hanlon, Poppy Pritchard, Eve Annets, Katie Startup, Ayaka Yamashita, Naomi Layzell, Risa Shimizu, Aoba Fujino and Vivianne Miedema.

WATCH: Sjogran: The main goal is to win

HERE TO STAY

Alongside acquisitions to the Club in 2024, several key players have also committed their futures to City by signing new contracts.

Lauren Hemp, Kerstin Casparij, Leila Ouahabi and Yui Hasegawa all followed head coach Gareth Taylor is penning extensions at the Club across the past 12 months.

Here's to a prosperous 2025!

WATCH: Watch: Casparij walks her cat around Heaton Park!