WSL expansion: Dissecting the plan to reshape women’s football in England | OneFootball

The Barclays Women’s Super League (WSL) announced its expansion this summer — a move as welcome as it was overdue. This significant step forward promises to bring more teams and heightened competition to England’s premier women’s football league.

The plans will see the top tier expand to 14 teams, starting with the 2026/27 season. They will also introduce a promotion/relegation playoff between the team finishing 13th in the WSL and the runners-up of WSL 2.

The WSL 2 will also move towards becoming a fully professional league as part of WSL Football’s (the body that oversees England’s top two divisions) ten-year plan.

The WSL expansion and the move to WSL 2 professionalism will alleviate issues that have been growing for a number of seasons now. However, they may inadvertently create new problems.

Let’s first take a look at the issues that will be addressed — if not completely solved — in the short-term.

League stagnation and the need for intrigue

Teams in the top flight have become stagnant in recent years. For those positioned from fifth to 11th place, there’s very little left to play for. They aren’t challenging for the top bracket and they only realistically need to be better than the promoted side to avoid relegation.

Last season, fourth-placed Manchester City finished 15 points ahead of fifth-placed Brighton. At the other end of the table, relegated Crystal Palace ended ten points adrift of 11th-placed Tottenham Hotspur.

Chelsea’s dominance last season left little for the general public to get excited about. Of course, that’s neither their fault nor their problem. But when you combine that with a lack of any real relegation battle, the league’s overall appeal suffers.

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The newly introduced promotion/relegation playoff between the WSL side finishing last and the second tier’s third place finisher should provide some intrigue as teams battle to avoid it or get into it. 

How much more exciting would last season have been if Palace had known they could’ve kept their season alive in the play-off? The same goes for the chasing pack in the WSL 2 (formerly the Championship).

Seven points have separated the top four in the WSL 2 in the past two seasons. The prospect of the play-off would keep more teams’ seasons going for a bit longer. The play-off itself will create fascinating drama as it does in the men’s EFL.

WSL 2 promotion shake-up

The closeness of the WSL 2 over the past couple of years points towards a bottleneck forming. This has also been the case in the third tier’s National League North and South divisions. With only one promotion place available in those leagues, ambitious teams who miss out risk becoming frustrated and eventually disillusioned.

However, there will be some temporary relief this season. With two sides from WSL 2 going up automatically and the play-off spot on offer, they will need to be replaced. As has been the case for the past couple of seasons, the winners of the Northern and Southern National Leagues will go up automatically, with another play-off, this time between the runners-up of those leagues, being the most likely option to complete the second tier line-up in the 2026/27 season.

The FA will decide how Tier 3 and below balance out in due course. As things stand, the current two-up, two-down model between WSL 2 and the National League will resume after this season.

The financial crisis threatening the women’s lower leagues

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This can all lead to a significant pitfall re-emerging within the lower divisions. The bottleneck between Tiers 2 and 3 and below will simply return. For the pyramid to continue offering ambitious clubs a chance to progress, expansion of WSL 2 and the leagues below must come sooner rather than later.

However, the move towards more stringent licensing requirements in the second tier has already led to some pushback. Blackburn withdrew from the league in May, saying the financial requirements ‘can no longer be sustained’.

Wolves didn’t even apply for a licence for promotion from the National League North, with their owners unwilling to commit to a full-time model. Fourth-tier Barnsley folded earlier this month, citing ‘financial restraints put upon the club’.

A lot of these scenarios point towards significantly bigger issues that are going to have to be overcome. Simply put, the funding to clubs lower down the pyramid isn’t sustainable enough for clubs to survive, let alone thrive.

Solve the calendar crisis or risk it all

Scheduling will present a significant obstacle. The WSL expansion will add four extra league games per season. Although that doesn’t seem like a huge change on the surface, the women’s football calendar already faces immense congestion.

An increased league schedule, along with FA and League Cup matches, adds to an ever-growing continental and international calendar. Organisers will have to factor all these demands into player welfare guidelines.

For the game and its pyramid structure to strengthen, leadership must thoroughly address these concerns. If they do, the opportunities that expanding and further professionalising the sport could present are enormous.

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