Next up in this series looking at the women’s football pyramid, I will take a look at the Women’s Championship ahead of the 2024/25 season.
I have already covered an explainer as to how the league system works and looked at the 2024/25 WSL season.
Let’s begin…
History
Again, we are taking a quick look back at the Championship when it started.
It kicked off in 2014 as WSL2, the second division of the WSL. It replaced the Women’s Premier League National Division as the second tier in women’s football.
The first season saw 10 teams take part: Aston Villa, Doncaster Rovers Belles, Durham, London Bees, Millwall Lionesses, Oxford United, Reading, Sunderland, Watford and Yeovil Town.
It ran a summer season in line with the WSL and switched formats at the same time as the WSL.
The first season saw a familiar name current Brighton player and Euros winner Fran Kirby become the top scorer with 24 goals in 16 appearances, a record which still stands a decade on. In second place was a fellow Euros winner, Beth Mead, who scored 13 goals. Other Lionesses who made the top 10 were Beth England and Millie Bright both playing for Doncaster.
The league itself has been through changes with the licensing issues to get up the league and then failure from teams above to meet those and being relegated. It later was renamed to the FA Women’s Championship before the 2018/19 season and later on, being included in the Barclays partnership.
Current season
There’s already been a fair amount of change in the off-season. For the first time, two teams were relegated from the league in 2023/24 with one team from the National League North and South each being promoted.
There used to be a playoff match between North and South for the one spot with one team being relegated from the Championship.
Lewes and Watford were unfortunately the teams to go down with Newcastle United and Portsmouth making the jump up. This makes for interesting viewing this season as both Sunderland and Southampton are also in the league.
There is one team missing out this season which was due to take part.
Reading, a team that was in the top league back in 2016 and are where Fran Kirby became the player she is today, withdrew from the league.
This was down to financial difficulties despite an attempted takeover with the current owner at Reading very much disliked by the fanbase.
They have sunk to the fifth tier of women’s football, the Southern Region Premier Division, and are now called the Reading FC Community Trust.
With the investment from Barclays in the league as well as NewCo taking over the running of it, this off-season has been the busiest ever with teams starting to make the push and putting their money where their mouth is.
Unfortunately, Blackburn Rovers made headlines with their lack thereof, reportedly paying players £9k a year and are semi-professional.
There has been a lot of player movement this time around especially with young players going into this league trying to get game time and hopefully developing into a top player.
There have been some big names making moves with Newcastle signing former City and Euros winner Demi Stokes and Northern Ireland player Rachel Furness making their move there. London City Lionesses seem to be heavily investing too with former City player and current Swedish international Kosovare Asllani being their marquee signing.
There have also been a few changes in the managerial hot seat. Southampton’s Marieanne Spacey changed her role at the club with Remi Allen, who has had a varied career at the top of women’s football, taking over.
She had been managing at London City Lionesses and Jocelyn Prêcheur took over her role, with himself having been managing at PSG. Sheffield United also saw a change after a heartbreaking season.
Luke Turner took the role after Jonathan Morgan was sacked by the club due to club investigations. Luke was only in an interim role so now Ash Thompson is their manager.
The Championship season itself will kick off in early September, a couple of weeks before the WSL and it will be an interesting watch to see if the teams that have invested heavily will get rewarded or not.
With last season being close, this one could be even closer and will be a must-watch.