Women’s Super League 2022-23 previews No 2: Aston Villa

When England’s Rachel Daly became Carla Ward’s sixth permanent signing of a busy summer it became crystal clear that Aston Villa’s manager is determined to improve on their ninth-place finish last season.

The highly-rated Ward is embarking on her second season at Villa bolstered by not merely Daly’s recruitment but the similarly high-profile arrival of the experienced France international Kenza Dali from Everton. Small wonder Ward has said eighth place will be the “minimum requirement” during a campaign in which she will aim to continue increasing Villa’s possession quotient while adding a few more goals to the equation. Although Daly played at left-back as England won Euro 2022, she was deployed as a striker for her former team, Houston Dash, and is expected to feature in Ward’s frontline.

Quite apart from the quality they will bring to the team, Daly and Dali also possess the streetwise nous Villa lost with the recent retirements of their former England central defender Anita Asante (now first-team coach at Bristol City) and the former England midfielder Jill Scott, who spent the second half of last season on loan at Villa from Manchester City.

With further experience imported in the shape of the talented Wales midfielder Natasha Harding, who has relocated from Reading, and the former Everton defender Danielle Turner, who joins a backline built around the Scotland defender Rachel Corsie and protected by the England goalkeeper Hannah Hampton, Villa look in decent shape.

Even so, Ward could do with welcoming back her captain, Remi Allen, from the long spell on the sidelines prompted by the ACL ligament the influential midfielder ruptured last April. Immensely popular with Villa fans, Allen cannot return soon enough as