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With Arsenal and Chelsea in Champions League action, attention turns to the battle to stay in the Women’s Super League this weekend.
The bottom four sides – Tottenham, Brighton, Reading and Leicester – are separated by just three points. By the evening of 27 May, one will have fallen into the Championship.
Spurs and Brighton meet on Saturday night, in a showpiece match for the hosts at the 63,000-seater Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
A run of nine successive WSL defeats between November and March saw Spurs fall into relegation trouble and cost manager Rehanne Skinner her job.
Under Vicky Jepson, Spurs stopped the rot with a 1-0 win over Leicester before a thriller at home to Aston Villa last week, where they came from 2-0 down to lead 3-2 only to be denied by a late Rachel Daly equaliser.
“We have added grit to our armour,” Jepson told her pre-match media conference. “Especially going 2-0 down, we could have cowed away, so I’m pleased that we kept ourselves in the game.
“There are still four games left and no one expected us to get anything against Villa. If it’s not to be on Saturday, there are still three games left.”
Jepson has prioritised focus in her team, including banning her staff from informing her about relegation rivals’ scores if they are playing at the same time as Spurs.
The last time Spurs faced Brighton on 30 October, they claimed an astonishing 8-0 away WSL win.
Manager Hope Powell departed after that result, and since then Jens Scheuer and Amy Merricks have been and gone in the Seagulls dug-out.
Under their fourth manager of the season, Melissa Phillips, there are signs of life – they pushed Manchester United all the way in their FA Cup semi-final and beat Everton in her first WSL game in charge, before losing a half-time lead in a 2-1 defeat at Liverpool last weekend.
While the 8-0 loss came long before her time in charge, Phillips says lessons are being taken from that game for Saturday.
“One of biggest takeaways from that match is our response to scoring or conceding, mentally and tactically after those moments, and making sure that moment does not define us and we know what it looks like to keep executing our plan,” she said.
Earlier on Saturday, Leicester host Liverpool knowing a win could lift them off the foot of the WSL – something which seemed impossible at Christmas.
The Foxes lost their first nine WSL games and were on zero points at the start of 2023. However a 3-0 win over Brighton on 15 January got them on the board, and a 2-1 victory over Reading before the international break has kept them in touch.
“I’ve always said it is really exciting, that is still the case,” said Foxes boss Willie Kirk. “I would rather have a boring end of the season, sitting seventh, but we have to take it as it is.
“The biggest motivator has been that everybody wrote us off at the end of the calendar year, we went into the Christmas break on zero points and there were some people saying there wasn’t such a thing as a relegation fight, it was done and dusted, Leicester were down. That has been motivating for us internally.”
If Leicester win, Reading will be bottom when they play on Sunday – a tough ask away to title-chasing Manchester City. City manager Gareth Taylor is not taking the Royals lightly however.
“We’re under no illusions that this team is going to come out and fight for their lives,” he said.
