Women Super League

The Football Association Women's Super League (FA WSL), also branded as the Barclays FA Women's Super League due to sponsorship reasons, is England's top women's football league. It was established in 2010 and is administered by the Football Association. It currently has 12 fully professional teams. The FA WSL took over as the highest level of women's football in England, replacing the FA Women's Premier League National Division. In 2011, eight teams participated in the inaugural WSL season. There was no relegation from the WSL in the first two seasons. For six years, from 2011 to 2016, the WSL abandoned the winter football season in favor of summer games (from March until October). Since 2017–18, the WSL has become a winter league, running from September to May, as was customary prior to 2011. The Women's Super League consisted of two divisions – FA WSL 1 and FA WSL 2 – from season 2014 to 2017–18 and introduced a promotion and relegation system to the WSL. The second tier was renamed the FA Women's Championship from 2018 to 2019.

History

The FA WSL was supposed to begin in 2010 to replace the FA Women's Premier League National Division as England's highest level of women's football, but it was postponed for a year due to the global economic crisis. Arsenal, Barnet, Birmingham City, Bristol Academy, Chelsea, Colchester United, Doncaster Rovers Belles, Everton, Leeds Carnegie, Leicester City, Lincoln Ladies, Liverpool, Millwall Lionesses, Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest, and Sunderland were among the sixteen clubs who qualified for eight positions in the league's inaugural season. Later, Leeds Carnegie withdrew their submission. Blackburn Rovers and Watford of the Women's Premier League refused to apply. In February 2010, FA Chief Executive Ian Watmore said that the formation of the league was a "top priority." The inaugural WSL season began on April 13, 2011. For the 2014 season, a second division called FA WSL 2 was created, with nine teams promoted from the WSL 1 and one team relegated. The WSL 1 stood at eight players, while the WSL 2 stayed at eleven. Formalized paraphrase  Manchester City has been awarded the latest WSL 1 license. Doncaster Rovers Belles have been relegated to the WSL 2 division. They attempted to appeal their demotion but were unsuccessful. For the 2019–20 season, the league was expanded to twelve clubs, with Yeovil Town relegated after going into administration and being joined by Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, who were promoted from the Championship.

Structure:

There are actually twelve clubs in the FA Women's Super League. Initially, the league was characterized as professional, with the top four players on each side earning more than £20,000 a year. However, it was announced in November 2010 that the WSL will be semi-professional, with only a "handful" of top players working full-time. Annual wage bills for clubs were supposed to be only one-tenth of those in the now-defunct American Women's Professional Soccer. Following a review, the FA revealed in September 2017 that the league and its licensing requirements will be restructured beginning with the 2017–18 season, with the intention of creating a fully professional top division of between 8 and 14 teams and a second division of up to 12 semi-professional teams. The league went professional for the 2018–19 season.

Clubs competing :

 Champions:

Sources:The Guardian

  Shekicks

  BBC Sport

  isportconnect.

  The Times