A new season of the Women’s Super League brings with it a new weekly feature from Football365. Chances are you’re already aware of our winners and losers columns, generally on the Premier League, but also on transfer windows and anything else we can crowbar into that particular format. If you’re not well versed in all things F365 and are here just for the women’s content, then welcome.
You may have guessed with this being ‘winner and loser’ that this is winners and losers lite, if you like, a winner and a winner from the first weekend of the WSL, as will be the case for each of the following 21 matchdays to come, and hopefully some of the European stuff as well.
Winner: Ornella Vignola
We already regret the limitation of just one winner after Olivia Smith, who became the first £1m women’s player in the summer, scored an absolute beauty on debut for Arsenal in their 4-1 win over London City Lionesses. But that said, it was hardly a toss-up.
The Freidkin Group takeover saw Everton buy nine new players in a big-spending summer transfer window and Brian Sorensen’s side were harbouring ambitions to challenge the WSL elite this season having been cash-strapped for years even before they left Anfield on Sunday with 4-1 bragging rights, along with a perfectly reasonable expectation that one of their six debutant starters is going to be an absolute superstar for them.
Vignola’s hat-trick was the first time an Evertonian has scored three in a Merseyside derby since club and English football legend Dixie Dean in September 1931. She’s 20 and this wasn’t just her first game for Everton, but her first game in the WSL and one of few in which she’s operated as the central striker, with most of her appearances for Granada, Sevilla and Barcelona beforehand either on the wing or as a No.10.
That goes some way to explaining why the three goals she scored at Anfield were remarkably only the 10th, 11th and 12th of a club career which began in earnest in 2022, though the calibre of the first and second goals before a fortunate deflection gifted her the third suggest her previous managers have missed quite the trick in not sticking her up front more often.
If the first proved she’s an excellent footballer, as she ran from halfway before showing nifty feet in the box before curling it into the corner, the second showed her class as a Proper Striker. It was a header it felt like we saw twice a game in the late 90s but almost never now. The ball was crossed in at pace and Vignola got the perfect contact on it at the front post to direct the ball towards the far corner and in with a kiss off the bar. Absolutely beautiful and what a start for her and Everton.
Loser: Michelle Agyemang
It’s really quite extraordinary that Arsenal have attacking quality and depth enough to decide to send the Young Player of Euro 2025 back out on loan to Brighton for another season. It makes sense when you’ve got Beth Mead, Caitlin Foord, Chloe Kelly, Olivia Smith, Alessia Russo and Stina Blackstenius vying for those forward positions, but it’s the equivalent of Barcelona sending Lamine Yamal away in search of game time after the men’s tournament a year before.
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All eyes will be on her in Brighton games this season, and Sarina Wiegman was in attendance at Broadfield Stadium for the visit of an Aston Villa side and defence which did a stand-up job of thwarting the Lionesses’ breakout star.
She had one decent effort deflected onto the post and another chance from six yards out well blocked but cut an increasingly frustrated figure as the game wore on, largely it seems as a result of a lack of service.
And we wonder whether Brighton – who have improved season on season for the last three – can match the ambition of the teenager, who got a taste of the limelight this summer and may not be all that enamoured with the idea of shrinking away from it while playing for a team which looked a long way short of the four or five elite WSL teams this weekend.
