Manchester United Women: Defying the Odds in 2025-26
“Defy the odds.”
Four syllables, stamped across Manchester United Women’s 2025-26 campaign. A slogan, a rallying cry, a marketing line. Take your pick.
Inside the club, it has become something else entirely — a reminder that the odds they are supposed to defy are, in no small part, created by Manchester United itself.
A night that exposed the fault lines
For 79 minutes in Munich, the slogan felt alive.
Melvine Malard’s early strike dragged the Champions League quarter-final back to 3-3 on aggregate against Bayern Munich, serial contenders on this stage. United, on their European debut, were suddenly level with eight-time quarter-finalists, clinging to belief with a squad so thin that an 18-year-old, Jess Anderson, was one of only four outfield substitutes.
The spirit that has carried this team for years — the togetherness, the refusal to accept their supposed place in the hierarchy — was doing the heavy lifting again.
Then the second half started to look like the season in microcosm.
United dropped deeper. Legs tired. Injuries told. After six shots and four on target before the break, they mustered just one attempt in the second half. Their expected goals sank to 0. Their share of the ball to 24 per cent. Bayern, smelling blood, racked up nine shots and an xG of 1.45.
The pressure finally broke them. Two late goals from successive corners, Bayern’s 12th and 13th of the night, sealed a 5-3 aggregate defeat and underlined a season-long vulnerability from set pieces that everyone inside the club recognises.
You can only hold the line for so long. You cannot defy gravity forever.
Out of cups, out of Europe, and running on fumes
The exit in Munich leaves United out of Europe and the FA Cup, beaten by Chelsea in the League Cup final and clinging to the race for Champions League qualification with three Women’s Super League matches left.
Inside the women’s hierarchy and across the club’s executive tier, one question keeps resurfacing: what is the plan to ensure this is not a one-off European adventure but the start of something sustainable? How do you build a team that does not have to live in permanent overachievement mode?
Recruitment last summer hinted at ambition. Jess Park, Fridolina Rolfo and Julia Zigiotti Olme arrived. United also lost out on two other targets after being outbid. That setback nudged internal conversations towards new ways of financing the women’s team, including the prospect of external investment.
INEOS’s minority stake in December 2024 sharpened the focus on the men’s side first. Sir Jim Ratcliffe has said as much, acknowledging that his attention has been tied up in reshaping the men’s operations and finances, leaving the women’s long-term plan undercooked.
This season has shown the cost of that delay. A stretched squad, pushed to compete on multiple fronts, has been battered by injuries and fixture congestion. The need to keep pace with Europe’s elite and the WSL’s financial arms race has moved from desirable to urgent.
A March meeting was earmarked as a key moment. Senior figures from the women’s set-up and the executive team sat down with decision-makers to explore investment options, including selling a stake in the women’s side.
Club sources say that idea was quickly parked. Nothing concrete has emerged. Yet multiple people familiar with those discussions insist internal talks continue, with final recommendations still to be put before the board and owners. A subtle rebrand has even been floated in some conversations, though senior leadership has no plans to act on that.
Falling behind a changing market
United are not alone in weighing up outside money. Chelsea Women sold around 10 per cent to Alexis Ohanian last May in a deal worth £20million, valuing the team at more than £200m. Everton Women confirmed a minority investment from GED Investments in December. Sunderland Women are in advanced talks to sell a majority stake to U.S. firm Sixth Street via its women’s sport platform, Bay Collective.
This is the new landscape. United, for all their global stature, are struggling to match it.
Multiple sources say the club have found it hard to keep up with rising wages and transfer fees because of budget constraints. Those inside Old Trafford push back, describing it as a deliberate, sustainable model rather than a failure to compete.
The reality is stark. At least two signings completed in January were deals originally targeted in the previous summer but delayed. One planned arrival for this coming window remains unconfirmed because the recruitment budget has not yet been signed off by those controlling the club’s overall finances.
Inside the women’s camp, messages have been sent upstairs all season, pleading for help. One senior figure circulated a screenshot of a threadbare bench against a WSL rival to underline the crisis.
The injury list has grown into a roll call of key names: Dominique Janssen, Ellen Wangerheim, Anna Sandberg, Leah Galton, Elisabeth Terland, Ella Toone. Against Bayern, Simi Awujo limped off with what looked like a hamstring problem.
Training has been stripped back. Tactical walkthroughs, video work, recovery. Less intensity, less risk, less chance of adding another name to the treatment room. It is survival mode.
Investment or just enough to get by?
To say United have not invested at all would be wrong. Under head coach Marc Skinner, now in his fifth year, the club have made 37 signings. The operating budget has more than doubled, from just under £5m in 2021-22 to £10.7m in 2024-25, according to the most recent accounts.
Those numbers can be framed as evidence of a sensible, sustainable climb. Inside and outside the camp, others draw a sharper line: there is a difference between investing sustainably and investing sufficiently to win.
Last season, United spent £5.88m on wages. Arsenal spent £11.3m. Manchester City, who finished fourth, reported operating expenses of £14m, £4m more than United. Chelsea’s 2024-25 figures are not yet public, but their previous season — a fifth straight WSL title and runs to the semi-finals of both the FA Cup and Champions League — came with an operating budget north of £20m, roughly double United’s.
On the pitch, Skinner’s record reflects both progress and a ceiling. League finishes of fourth, second (a club high), fifth and third. Four major finals reached, one trophy — a 4-0 FA Cup win over Tottenham Hotspur in 2023-24 — and three defeats to Chelsea by a combined 6-0.
Against the division’s heavyweights, the numbers are more brutal. Across the past two seasons, United have three wins in 17 matches in all competitions against Chelsea, Arsenal and City. Against Chelsea alone, United have one win in their last 19 attempts, that FA Cup semi-final in 2023-24. Skinner’s personal record versus the west London club stands at one win and one draw in 15 games.
Skinner in the spotlight
Inside the dressing room and around it, opinions on Skinner are split.
Some close to the players question his ability — or appetite — to develop young talent, arguing he favours established, senior-ready profiles. The numbers back up the perception. Before 16-year-old Layla Drury’s WSL debut on February 15, United had given just 90 league minutes all season to players under 21. Those minutes came in a 3-0 defeat to Manchester City in November, when 21-year-old Wales goalkeeper Safia Middleton-Patel stood in for Phallon Tullis-Joyce after the regular No 1 fractured her eye socket.
Others highlight a lack of in-game coaching. Players, they say, often receive limited instruction from the touchline and are left to improvise attacking patterns. Skinner rarely leads technical drills, delegating much of the on-pitch work to his staff because of his broader responsibilities.
With a squad ravaged by injuries, some staff members have even had to step into sessions to make up numbers or act as referees, which can dilute the intensity and detail of the coaching.
There is another side to the story. People who work closely with Skinner praise his willingness to absorb public criticism and shield his players. They describe him as more tactically nuanced than many give him credit for, particularly in organising United defensively within the constraints he faces. At 43, he is seen as a sharp communicator, comfortable in media settings and in one-on-one conversations with players.
Some in the squad enjoy the freedom he grants them to express themselves. Against Europe’s savvier and stronger sides, that freedom has sometimes felt like exposure. In Munich’s second half, with Bayern squeezing higher and higher, United offered almost nothing going forward. There was no obvious attacking adjustment, no clear route out.
Set pieces have become the loudest alarm bell. Long-time goalkeeping coach Ian Willcock, who also oversaw set-piece defending and helped United set a WSL clean-sheet record in 2022-23, left last summer as part of a wider staff turnover. He was replaced by former Liverpool Women coach Joe Potts.
Since then, United have repeatedly buckled at dead balls. A 2-1 FA Cup fifth-round defeat to Chelsea came via an extra-time corner. Bayern’s late double from corners in the Champions League felt grimly familiar.
“We were knocked out in all our games from a set piece, in the FA Cup and now here,” captain Maya Le Tissier told Disney after the Bayern loss. “It’s something we need to work on.”
Tactical choices have raised eyebrows too. Skinner’s decision to use striker Elisabeth Terland as a No 10 in the League Cup final against Chelsea drew internal and external scrutiny. So did his use of Ellen Wangerheim, a centre-forward signed in January from Hammarby, as a winger.
Wangerheim said in February that she had been told during negotiations she would play as a No 9. United later brought in Lea Schuller from Bayern, crowding the central striking role. A club source insists Wangerheim knew from the start she would also be asked to operate wide. She admitted she needed “some training sessions and games” to adapt to the wing. The relentless fixture schedule has left little room for either.
Despite the questions, Skinner signed a new two-year contract last summer and retains the club’s backing.
A team others are targeting
The ending to United’s first Champions League campaign stings. It should. But the season is not finished. Three league games remain: Tottenham Hotspur, Brighton & Hove Albion, and then Chelsea on the final day.
To return to Europe, United will likely need to do what they almost never do — beat Chelsea, a side they have managed to defeat once in 19 meetings.
Around the league, rivals are watching closely. Senior figures from three clubs currently below United in the WSL have identified them as the team to catch next season. They point not only to the financial constraints in the transfer market but to what they see as a lack of infrastructure around the women’s side.
The perception is clear: United are vulnerable.
Skinner, speaking after the Bayern defeat, did not flinch from the broader picture.
“I’m incredibly proud of what my players are doing on resources we have,” he said. “Because we wear Manchester United’s badge, everybody expects us to be the very best team in the world. We have that expectation too. Yet we’ve got to grow because we’re eight years old.
You (can) give me all the flack. That’s no problem, that’s my job. But if we want to compete at this latter stage, we’ve seen what we’ve got to do, as a club. And then it’s our choice now, isn’t it?”
The slogan says “Defy the odds”. The next move belongs to the people who set them.
