Nerdy stuff

This page collates statistical data and investigations into the WSL (and Spurs Women).

Stats to help make sense of the women’s game.

FB REF has an amazing array of stats about Spurs Women and individual players.

You can also find great statistics – especially on individual games from whoscored.com. For instance, this is the latest on Spurs Women. Like FB REF there are individual player statistics and within game player data.

If you are looking for an App to keep you up-to-date with the WSL and SpursWomen FobMob (Google Play; Apple) has good coverage of the Women’s game with live in-game stats and you can set Spurs Women as a favourite team.

If you fancy doing your own statistical analysis you can download stats from the 2020/21 season, along with instructions on how to produce analysis (including pretty charts) using R from StatsBomb.

As time goes on I hope to use some of these in-depth stats in blog posts about individual players.

Meanwhile, Ash has produced some clever analysis of women’s football on the Dribbles and Nutmegs blog.

Investigations into aspects of the women’s game

In Nov 2021 the UK Government published a Fan-Lead Review of Football Governance: securing the game’s future. Chapter 10 is on ‘Growing Women’s Football‘. It’s not very detailed, but makes some recommendations.

FIFPRO, the global union for football players has published a report on workload, which shows scheduling (long periods without games and then bunching) is holding back women’s football. The full report is 31 pages, and has lots of interesting data).

Online and offline magazine She Kicks has lots of good content, but especially good are some investigations/long reads:

• How are player contracts in women’s football changing? (Dec 2021)
• 100 Years Since the Ban – ‘When Women’s Football in England Challenged the Men’s Game’ (Dec 2021)
• Is there a future for independent clubs in the elite women’s game? (Feb 2021)
• Why are there so few Black England women footballers? (Oct 2020)

Other recent deep-dives:

• Why player-coach relationships are an issue in women’s football (Jan 2022) Emma Sanders & Alistair Magowan for BBC Sport
• The Athletic has published two great articles on LGBTQ+ visibility in women’s football (Sept 2021 and Dec 2021) but these are behind a paywall.

Academic studies of the women’s game

The following are some recent scholarly articles exploring the WSL. They may be a bit heavy-going if you are not used to reading academic material, but there’s lots of interesting content, and they dig deep on specific topics.

• Culvin A (2021) Football as work: the lived realities of professional women footballers in England. Managing Sport and Leisure.
• Culvin A & Bowles A (2021) The Incompatibility of Motherhood and Professional Women’s Football in England. Frontiers in Sport and Active Living.
• Woodhouse, D, Fielding-Lloyd, B & Sequerra, R (2019) Big brother’s little sister: the ideological construction of women’s super league, Sport in Society, 22:12, 2006-2023.
• Mondal S (2021) She Kicks: The State of Competitive Balance in the Top Five Women’s Football Leagues in Europe, Journal of Global Sport Management.
• Bransen, L., & Davis, J. (2021). Women’s football analyzed: interpretable expected goals models for women. In AI for Sports Analytics (AISA) Workshop at IJCAI 2021

You can find a collection of critical academic contributions about all aspects of football (including women’s football) at The Football Collective’s youtube channel.

There is loads of other interesting and even nerdy stuff out there, so this page will continue to develop.

If you have a suggestion of things to add, get in touch via the Contact page.