Manchester City send early title message in WSL opener

Manchester City began the new campaign with a convincing performance over West Ham, coming away 2-0 winners on the day. It’s a domestic-focused season for the Citizens this year and Gareth Taylor showed City's capabilities despite missing key players.

Lauren Hemp gave City the lead with a second-half curling effort. Jill Roord doubled the visitors' lead with a dummy run to split the Hammers' back line and curled the ball around the ‘keeper on her debut.

Leila Ouahabi was shown a straight red for kicking out at Emma Harris, taking City down to 10 players with 20 minutes left to play.

It was an expected performance from City. Their usual heavy possession-based style kept West Ham’s chances for rebuttal to a minimum - even the back line, who often caused themselves chaos, seemed streamlined and organised throughout the entirety of the game.

However, West Ham kept City at arm's length in the first half, having an answer for the majority of City’s attempts on goal. Even Chloe Kelly was denied. She stepped up for a thunderous spot-kick, but McKenzie Arnold got her hand to the ball and parried it around the post.

The message from City came from an unexpected starting XI. Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw was left out of the squad after suffering a ‘niggle’ in pre-season. Ellie Roebuck, Laura Coombs and Kerstin Casparij started their season from the Citizens' bench - surprising considering the trio were stalwarts of last season’s campaign.

So, Kelly took the helm of the attack at centre forward, Hemp and Mary Fowler on either flank, all three intertwining in harmony - the Matildas star seems to have broken into the squad since shining at last summer’s World Cup.

Yui Hasegawa rarely put a foot wrong last campaign, a quality still strong