Rehanne Skinner and the art of surviving football failure

Rehanne Skinner knows a thing or two about a losing run. When she was in charge at Tottenham Hotspur, she managed to lose nine WSL games in a row before they finally pulled the plug. She is eight league games into this one at West Ham, a run that stretches back to last season when they beat Crystal Palace 7-1. Her team are currently bottom of the WSL without a single point and a goal difference of -15. 

Skinner is not alone down there, though. Liverpool also find themselves without a point approaching the first international break of the season. They have played a game less than West Ham, with their match against Aston Villa being postponed following the death of their former manager Matt Beard, but are equally struggling. Both teams have managed only two goals so far this season.

In a normal WSL season, the threat of relegation would already be looming over both sides. Everton might only be four points ahead in tenth – hardly an insurmountable gap – but the outlook is gloomy for both teams. This isn’t a normal WSL season, however, because there is no automatic relegation spot. Instead the team who finishes bottom will have a relegation play-off against whoever finishes third in the WSL2. 

The unique situation is part of the league’s plan to expand the top division to 14 teams next season, something that has been long overdue. But it also means that as clubs take stock of their results following this opening quarter of the season, they know that coming last this season might be embarrassing, but it won’t necessarily be deadly. In fact, both West Ham and Liverpool have had comprehensive wins over WSL2 opposition this season in the League Cup group stage. WSL2 teams are investing but the gap between the two divisions is still significant.

The league has long had this kind of limbo issue where clubs do the bare minimum to keep their teams in the division. Leicester City, for example, are in their fifth season in the league and have never finished higher than tenth. This summer, they sacked manager Amandine Miquel a week before the season began. This week, they gave Rick Passmoor, their interim manager, the permanent job. Passmoor has not managed at the top level of the women’s game since 2017 and has recently reposted disgraced former England manager Mark Sampson on his LinkedIn to give an idea of the forward-thinking approach being taken. It is hard to see any kind of coherent strategy for improvement there but it has not mattered since there have regularly been worse teams that take the fall.

This season could offer teams an opportunity to take a longer-term view on how they want to develop. Without the same threat of relegation, there is more freedom to experiment with style, take risks, and bed in new players. This is arguably what Liverpool have been aiming to do. 

They reportedly used a significant portion of Olivia Smith’s £1million fee from Arsenal to buy out Gareth Taylor from his Manchester City contract which had left him on gardening leave. Taylor’s possession heavy style is in stark contrast to how previous manager Matt Beard had wanted to play, and given the strains on their squad following Beard’s death, it is hard to exactly judge what Liverpool’s level actually is. They very nearly snatched a point off Taylor’s former side on Sunday until Gemma Bonner’s late equaliser was correctly ruled out for being offside.

At the same time, it is hard to look at the squad at Taylor’s disposal and believe he is going to be able to make a good fist of it. Plenty of teams in the women’s game plead poverty, and very few are worth taking seriously on it but Liverpool particularly so. When the men’s team spend £446m over the summer, it is only negligence that leaves a squad in such limited shape.

If Liverpool can at least claim experimentation, West Ham are doing no such thing. A hot goalscoring streak from Shekiera Martinez at the end of last season helped hide the fact that they only won five games all year. Now Martinez’s goals have dried up and so have everyone else's, leaving a disorganised side looking toothless in attack. It was hard to watch Kinga Szemik’s error for London City Lionesses only goal on Sunday and not think she wanted to get Rehanne Skinner sacked, given she let Kosovare Asllani steal the ball off her toes following a goal kick.

Whether West Ham make a managerial change over the international break will give a good indication as to how much they actually care about steering this team in a positive direction. The sad reality is that for almost the entirety of their time in the league, it has been apparent that they don’t. Liverpool are unlikely to given the cost of bringing Taylor to the club, but again, it is quite clear how they view the women’s team. As it is, teams will continue to coast towards the bottom of the league, getting a point here and there. But as the nouveau riche of the second division push into the WSL, they might not have that luxury for much longer.

Photograph by James Fearn/Getty Images