Petershill will stage the game of the day tomorrow between Glasgow City and Celtic as the curtain comes up on the SWPL and the runners and riders prepare for a fresh crack at the title.
In some ways, it is a league sobered by cuts across the board this summer – there is not one team who have escaped the rigid tightening of belts as sustainability has become the buzzword of the last few months.
Just exactly what those cuts mean in real terms will make itself known in the next few months. That there has been a regression around much of the women’s game in Scotland is inarguable with compelling evidence offered on and off the park.
Hearts and Hibs in particular were decimated this season, with players heading south of the Border, but there have also been high profile exits from Celtic, Glasgow City and Rangers.
There has been ample business done by clubs during a busy window in terms of numbers arriving. The proof will be in the pudding as to the respective level of that business as teams look to knit together on the pitch.
In terms of the game of the day in the north side of Glasgow, both teams go into a fresh campaign feeling they have something to prove; City, for so long the SWPL team, will have spent much of this summer ruminating on the one that got away. Dominant last season as they led the line until the closing weeks of the season, their post-split form cost them the title.
Games in which they should never have been dropping points were lost to sloppy goals although the loss of Nicole Koslova to an ACL injury was huge, given the form she had been in for the bulk of the campaign. Such moments will have made for an uneasy summer for coach Leanne Ross.
For Celtic, the optics of a fifth-place finish tell their own story. Grant Scott took over mid-season from Elena Saduka, overseeing a tough five-month spell. He concluded the season with success in the Scottish Cup as Celtic got their first win over Rangers in more than two years and banked a bit of silverware. Whether that is a springboard to the kind of form that won them their first title in 2024 remains to be seen.
That there have been five different title winners across the last five seasons would shine a light on the competitive nature of the league and the even distribution of resources. But what was impossible to ignore across the closing weeks of the season was the question of mentality.
Rangers spent the opening half of the season up and down, inevitable perhaps given the timing of Leanne Crichton’s move to manage the club, before producing a much more consistent campaign post-Christmas. But the 6-0 defeat to Glasgow City on the final day of the season will still resonate with that squad.
Defeat to City was entirely possible but the manner of the loss and the collapse on a day when any kind of victory would have given them the Championship raised wider questions. Defeat the following weekend at Hampden to Celtic only served to magnify them.
Hearts limped over the line to the title but it is a very different side who kick off their defence against Aberdeen. It’s a new manager, a new team and how they fare with a target on their backs will be interesting.
Certainly, what is notable across this summer is that as much work on mentality has been as necessary as squad surgery.
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AND ANOTHER THING
Rangers are right to be sore about their Champions League qualification resting on two decisions that were miles off the mark last week.
The fact there is no VAR at this
stage of the tournament is a shocking indictment of how the women’s game is still regarded as a second-class citizen.
First up, the dismissal of Eva Hendle against Slavia Prague – which meant she was suspended for last Saturday night’s game against Ajax – was revealed to be a case of mistaken identity. On loan from Chelsea, she was sent off shortly after having been booked already. Only problem was that the second infringement – a bit of pushing – was done by Laura Berry.
The problem for Rangers was that by the time they got a copy of the referee’s report and appealed the decision – at a not insignificant cost of €1,000 – the timeline had lapsed and the suspension for Hendle stood.
To add insult to injury, a penalty in the closing stages of their second qualifier against Ajax was equally perplexing. And with no chance to review the on-field decision and see it from an alternative angle, it leaves the women’s game once more looking like the poor relation.
If UEFA are serious about elevating standards and pushing for a more professional approach there has to be questions asked about such decisions that have such huge consequences for the clubs involved.
AND FINALLY
Watching the Mourinho documentary on Netflix, it is hard to ignore the irony around the Eva Carneiro controversy.
A manager who has specialised in the dark arts, Mourinho was incandescent with both Carneiro, then a first-team doctor at the club and head physio Jon Fearn when they entered the pitch to treat Eden Hazard in 2015.
His issue was that his team had to play out the closing minutes of the game against Swansea, their opening game of the season, with nine men given goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois had already been sent off. Legislation from the FA meant any players who had received treatment had to then go off the pitch.
Carneiro paid a heavy price for Hazard’s theatrics. The player, whom Mourinho effectively knew to be at it, would also have been well aware of the rules around treatment on the pitch – and his need to leave it afterwards. He did not seem to invite the same furious, verbally-abusive ire that Carneiro and Fearn got.
Both were removed from first-team duties in the aftermath. Carneiro left Chelsea the following month and launched legal proceedings against the club for constructive dismissal as well as a separate claim against Mourinho. It was eventually settled out of court with the club apologising to Carneiro, while Mourinho never did.
“Eleven years on and here we are reliving the worst. Hope they made some money,” she wrote on Twitter this week.
Having watched the episode back, it is hard not to share her bitterness at how it was handled.
