WSL 19/20 | fixtures - tables - news - and non-United live matchthreads

Angelinho

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The March home fixture against City takes place during an international break in the men's game.

There was talk last season of the women playing a match at Old Trafford. If that is still the intention, then the derby game seems like a sensible choice for the fixture to be hosted there.
 

jojojo

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The March home fixture against City takes place during an international break in the men's game.

There was talk last season of the women playing a match at Old Trafford. If that is still the intention, then the derby game seems like a sensible choice for the fixture to be hosted there.
Sounds good to me. Even if that doesn't happen, and we play at Leigh as normal, it's a good weekend for a big match. We're scheduled to play (away) to Spurs in the October break and Chelsea in the November break.

In general, it's good to see that they've listened to some of the criticism from last season around the scheduling - but the "standard" 2pm Sunday kickoff is unchanged, which I don't think is great when it comes to building a matchgoing crowd.

On the other hand, they've taken a crack at avoiding clashes with the clubs men's teams. That means they've had to push the match with Arsenal women out to a Monday to avoid our match on the Saturday and Arsenal's Sunday game. Not easy, but an attempt.
 

Maestro14

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Not an easy start then! 5 tough matches in the first 6 games, with Spurs away being probably the easiest one out of those 6.
 

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Not an easy start then! 5 tough matches in the first 6 games, with Spurs away being probably the easiest one out of those 6.
It’s really not very fortunate. If we hit the ground running, well enough, but otherwise it might batter a lot of the confidence out of a newly promoted team if there are a lot of negative results at the start.
 

jojojo

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It’s really not very fortunate. If we hit the ground running, well enough, but otherwise it might batter a lot of the confidence out of a newly promoted team if there are a lot of negative results at the start.
Yes, Arsenal won the league last year - the only teams they dropped points to were City and Chelsea (City beat them in the league cup final as well). City were WSL runners up, and won the League Cup and FA cup. We couldn't get a tougher start really.

Realistically it will be Liverpool, Spurs and Reading who will give us a better idea of where we stand in the WSL hierarchy. Reading beat us twice last year in cup games, but both matches were very tight. Interesting start all round really.
 

jojojo

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WSL gets its first Barclays sponsored prize money.


Just for scale, the budgets of the WSL1 teams are believed to be somewhere between £500k and £1m. So while the prize money may not look like much, it is worth having.
 

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Just a few observations on the crowd. It was a good turnout and a decent atmosphere. Not as intense as a men's derby of course, but a lot of the fans are novices at live stadium football (more kids, more women) or at women's football.

Though there was a distinct United end, and a predominantly City section, most of the ground was mixed and I'm not sure how they felt about the etiquette of that :smirk:

Having been in Paris for the WWC19 match between USA and a France and seeing mixed zones simultaneously singing both sets of chants (different fans!) - whilst still having distinct sections as well I'm hoping that one day maybe we can have matches like that. But who knows, maybe we'll go straight from the awkwardly polite to the too tribal - I hope not though.

Crowd wise, well United have already had a couple of 5k crowds at Leigh. Arsenal might be a tricky one as it's a Monday night (in a week when the men are at home on Saturday and Thursday). But the Liverpool match should be a good turnout. We shall see.
On the crowd record, the Chelsea v Tottenham match today was expected to beat it with up to 40,000 expected.

Just found it on the read button, 24,000 it is then :lol:
 

Steve Bruce

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On the crowd record, the Chelsea v Tottenham match today was expected to beat it with up to 40,000 expected.

Just found it on the read button, 24,000 it is then :lol:
40k free tickets where taken up. Obviously a lot stayed home.

What where the ticket prices of tge Manchester Derby?
 

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40k free tickets where taken up. Obviously a lot stayed home.

What where the ticket prices of tge Manchester Derby?
I don't know, others probably will though.

Just had a quick google search and stumbled upon this:

Did you know women’s match tickets now include unlimited drinks? :D

The full range of hot and cold drinks supporters will be able to enjoy include: tea, coffee, hot chocolate, diet coke, coke zero and sprite zero. :(

More digging and the prices for City v Liverpool match(01/12)range from £6.50 to £8.50, but that's at the Academy Stadium.
 

jojojo

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40k free tickets where taken up. Obviously a lot stayed home.

What where the ticket prices of tge Manchester Derby?
£7 adult, £2 concessions - but there were also some routes to let kids get free entry as well. I don't know the sales figures in each category - but there were more kids there than you see these days at OT, but the overwhelming majority of the crowd were 16+

City women's normal ticket prices are £6.50/£8.50 adult £4.50 concessions. They seem to sell allocated seat numbers through the website.

United sell unallocated seating - £6 adult/£3.00 concessions. I much prefer the unallocated idea. For me, one of the nice thing about going to the United women's games at the moment is that you can go and sit where you want - much more like going to a match when I was a kid, and you could stand with your mates or with similarly minded folk. United surveyed me a couple of times on the topic last year, so I'm hoping everyone who fills in the surveys says the same.

The full range of hot and cold drinks supporters will be able to enjoy include: tea, coffee, hot chocolate, diet coke, coke zero and sprite zero.
"Not the bottle ones though," according to my City going niece - just the draught :smirk:
 

jojojo

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So after the opening day games, we're bottom of the League, but I'm claiming mitigating circumstances :wenger:

Bristol 0-0 Brighton (3,041 at Ashton Gate)
City 1-0 United (31,213 at the Etihad)

Arsenal 2-1 West Ham (1,795)
Birmingham 0-1 Everton (873)
Chelsea 1-0 Spurs (24,564 at Stamford Bridge)
Liverpool 0-1 Reading (1,445)

Meanwhile, one of the most impressive crowds of the day was down in the National League, where Derby County Ladies got 2318 fans to Pride Park - unfortunately the home fans saw their team lose 0-1 to Nottingham Forest Women.

The most embarrassing result in one of these "old rivals, new rivalries" fixtures that have been happening this week is almost certainly Barcelona 9-1 CD Tacon. CD Tacon was taken over by Real Madrid during the summer, and though they haven't yet changed their name they have moved into the Madrid training ground, started wearing white kit and are now recruiting using their Madrid name. Ouch.
 

jojojo

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BBC4 is now the home of the Women's Football Show - MOTD for the women's game - and it's scheduled to air on that channel at 7pm, Sunday (and then on catchup at some point). Hopefully that's a permanent change - the old "sometime, usually sometime after MOTD2 on Sunday, unless there's something else instead" timeslot was a bit of a mess.
 
Matchday 2 | including United v Arsenal and Reading v City

jojojo

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Sunday 15th September
Everton Ladies 12:30 Bristol City Women
Reading Women 12:30 Man City Women (also on BBC website)
Brighton Women 14:00 Chelsea Women
Tottenham Women 14:00 Liverpool Women
West Ham Women 15:00 B'ham City Women

Monday 16th September
United Women 19:30 Arsenal Women (on BT in UK)

All matches are on FA Player - though which ones are geolocked and in which countries is a bit of an unknown at the moment. BT aired the derby on their pay channel but also put it on their website free to UK viewers, without much advance notice, so it's a bit of a TBC.
 

jojojo

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Reading 0-2 Manchester City (Att: 897)
Everton 2-0 Bristol City (Att: 441)
Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Liverpool (Att: 996)
Brighton & Hove Albion 1-1 Chelsea (Att: 1,352)
West Ham United 1-0 Birmingham City (Att: 1,297)

Willie Kirk's Everton are top of the table alongside City on 6 points - a big deal given they finished last season with 12 points in total. Unfortunately for them, they still play in Southport and their match clashed with their men's team playing Bournemouth on Sky TV.

The Women's Football Show (=MOTD) is on BBC4 now (7pm Sunday) and will be on iPlayer later.
 

JonSlu

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Does anyone know what time kick off is for the City Conti Cup match? I've seen in some places it says 12pm (eg. last night's programme, email from Utd 4th Sept & FA website), others 2:30pm (eg. Utd website, Utd ticketing website, Utd app).

I'll have plenty of time to get to OT for the Liverpool match if it's 12pm, but not 2:30pm.
 

jojojo

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Does anyone know what time kick off is for the City Conti Cup match? I've seen in some places it says 12pm (eg. last night's programme, email from Utd 4th Sept & FA website), others 2:30pm (eg. Utd website, Utd ticketing website, Utd app).

I'll have plenty of time to get to OT for the Liverpool match if it's 12pm, but not 2:30pm.
That'll be an annoying change if the have made it. That not only stops me getting to both games it even gets in the way of matchgoing fans seeing the other match on TV.

The United ticketing site is currently showing me 12 noon.
https://www.eticketing.co.uk/muticketsandmembership/EDP/Event/Index/4851

Which sites are wrong and which ones are wrong I don't know. Hopefully they'll all end up confirming noon, rather than them all moving to 2pm.
 

jojojo

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The weekend's matches:
Arsenal 4-0 Brighton & Hove Albion (1,607)
Everton 0-1 Manchester City (378)
Birmingham City P-P Reading (waterlogged)
Bristol City 0-4 Chelsea (986)
West Ham United 0-2 Tottenham Hotspur (24,790)
United 2-0 Liverpool (2,813)

Which means the League looks like this:

No matches this coming weekend - as there's an international break. United's next game is away to Spurs on the 13th at 12:30
 

jojojo

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The weekend's matches:
Manchester City 3-0 Birmingham City (1,834)
Brighton & Hove Albion 1-3 West Ham United (849)
Chelsea 2-1 Arsenal (4,149)
Liverpool 1-1 Bristol City (924)
Reading 3-2 Everton (616)
Tottenham Hotspur 0-3 Manchester United (1,299)

Ebony Salmon scored for Bristol.

Chelsea are building good home attendances, it should be fun when United play there. The other attendances, not so good, but Liverpool's 924 is more or less double what they were getting last year.

 

jojojo

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The weekend's matches:
Everton 2-0 Brighton (Att: 331)
Manchester United 2-0 Reading (Att: 1,997)
Birmingham City 2-0 Liverpool (Att: 1,056)
Arsenal 1-0 Manchester City (Att: 2,424)
Bristol City 1-2 Tottenham Hotspur
West Ham United 1-3 Chelsea

Which means United are fourth on GD and the League looks like:

In other news: Liverpool have announced that their women will play Everton at Anfield on the 17th November. It could be an uncomfortable debut though, Liverpool lost their bottom of the table clash with Birmingham today.
 

jojojo

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Several teams using the international break to promote their teams by playing at their main stadium.

Including Spurs who've broken the WSL attendance record (which was held by United/City at the Etihad)


Game ended Spurs 0-2 Arsenal

Liverpool get less than 1000 at their Prenton Park matches and Everton's typical home crowd (at Southport) is around 200, but for this derby:

Liverpool lost 0-1 and remain bottom of the league.
 

jojojo

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17 November
Brighton & Hove Albion 3-0 Birmingham City (4,130)
Chelsea 1-0 Manchester United (4,790)
Liverpool 0-1 Everton (23,500)
Manchester City 5-0 West Ham United (2,145)
Reading 3-3 Bristol City (1,420)
Tottenham Hotspur 0-2 Arsenal (38,262)

We slip back to fifth place after losing to Chelsea.

 

jojojo

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Some very wide margins in today's matches.

Arsenal 1-0 Liverpool (Att: 2,017)
Birmingham City 0-6 Chelsea (Att: 1,159)
Bristol City 0-5 Man City (Att: 1,212)
Everton 3-1 Tottenham Spurs (Att: 150)
Man United 4-0 Brighton (Att: 1,707)
West Ham Utd 2-3 Reading (Att: 1,392)

 

jojojo

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Barclays FA WSL results – 8 December

Bristol City 0-2 Birmingham City (Att: 404)
Chelsea 2-1 Manchester City (Att: 3,498)
Liverpool 1-1 West Ham United
Manchester United 3-1 Everton (Att: 1,805)
Reading 0-3 Arsenal (Att: 943)
Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Brighton & Hove Albion (Att: 571)