{"id":2738,"date":"2026-05-01T10:26:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T10:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=2738"},"modified":"2026-05-01T10:26:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T10:26:24","slug":"are-man-city-cracking-up-ghosts-of-title-races-past-are-threatening-to-derail-dominant-wsl-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=2738","title":{"rendered":"Are Man City cracking up? Ghosts of title races past are threatening to derail dominant WSL season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"article-body\" data-affiliate-button-variant=\"A\">\n<div>\n<p><span>For City to lose the title this season, from this position, would be even more heart-breaking. Jeglertz wasn&#8217;t here then, of course, and many of the names in the squad are new, too. But there are 10 players still at the club who experienced the disappointment of 2024, 10 players who will be desperate to avoid something similar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Victory over Liverpool this weekend would go a long way towards calming the nerves. The Reds are a better team than their position in the table suggests, having endured an incredible winless start to the WSL season that stretched across 11 games and into the New Year, <\/span><span>but was ended with the aid of a strong January transfer window<\/span><span>. They&#8217;ve since won four of their last eight and reached the FA Cup semi-finals, while head coach Gareth Taylor will have his own motivations in this fixture <\/span><span>after being sacked by City in March of last year<\/span><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But this City team is outstanding. It is well-coached, brilliantly set-up and boasts a wonderful variety of top talent, all capable of providing match-winning moments. After allowing doubts to creep into the external conversations about their title bid, the league leaders can stamp all that out on Sunday with a big response, one that proves why they deserve to lift that WSL trophy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Rising to the occasion and coping with the pressure is what champions are all about. This weekend, that&#8217;s what City have to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For City to lose the title this season, from this position, would be even more&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}