Leicester City Women: Rebuilding After Relegation

When Leicester City dropped out of the Women's Super League in May, the fall hit hard and fast. Relegation to WSL 2 did not just cost them their status. It stripped the dressing room bare.

Fourteen players have gone in the summer window. Nine of them were on the pitch for that brutal play-off defeat by Charlton Athletic. Janina Leitzig left for Manchester United. Hannah Cain, Noemie Mouchon and Jutta Rantala, the attacking core Leicester once built around, all moved to Everton.

This is not a tweak. It is a teardown.

Amid the exits and uncertainty, one decision cut through the gloom. Captain Sam Tierney, the club’s longest-serving player, signed a new deal in July that keeps her at Leicester until 2028.

At 27, with 151 appearances behind her and no shortage of suitors in the top flight, she could easily have walked away from a relegated side. She chose the opposite.

"I'm not the type to want to jump ship. Since I've been at Leicester, I've created a genuine connection with the club," she told BBC Sport. "I wanted to succeed and we've had a good number of years where it's been up and down, but I feel like now we're at a point where we can rebuild."

Leicester’s reputation has taken a battering. On the pitch, last season was a collapse. Off it, questions swirled.

The women’s team won just two of their 22 league matches, finished with a goal difference of -41 and slid out of the WSL in the same season the men’s side were relegated to League One. The symmetry was painful. The mood around the club darker still.

Tierney knows the noise.

"I think it's difficult because Leicester, at the minute, gets a bit of a bad rep. The club is fantastic and so are the people," she said. "It's a family kind of club and we're just going through a change. I am very proud to play for Leicester."

Relegation sparked immediate fears: Would the women’s team still play at King Power Stadium? Would the budget be slashed? Would the project stall just as the women’s game is accelerating?

Leicester have tried to answer with action. Players who wanted out were allowed to leave, with fees reinvested into a squad that has to look very different very quickly. Six new signings are already in, three more players have renewed their contracts alongside Tierney, and pre-season has at least offered some signs of life: a win over Rugby Borough, a draw with Manchester United, a defeat to Liverpool.

Only the coming months will show if it is enough. Tierney believes the upheaval can be the start of something sharper.

"When I first joined Leicester, we were training on one of the local parks. We weren't at Belvoir Drive where the men were. The progression is incredible," she said. "I want to make sure people want to play for Leicester. I want people to stay at Leicester. I want people to be jealous of Leicester."

"I know that's the potential of this club and hopefully we'll get that."

Tierney arrived from Sheffield United in 2020 and has lived through almost constant change. Seven managers. Promotion to the WSL in 2021. A run to the Women's FA Cup semi-finals in 2024. Survival battles. Another drop.

She has seen enough to know that talk of instant fixes is fantasy.

Changes, she says, "won't happen overnight", and her aim is not just to get Leicester back into the WSL but to keep them there. No more yo-yo seasons. No more survival scrambles.

"The type of person I am means I'm not happy if I don't feel like I'm finished somewhere," she said. "The direction the club want to go in and the change that needs to be made to do that, I'm on board with."

"Ultimately, my biggest thing is to make sure people feel the same connection that I have to the club and they want the club to progress. The moment that I leave, I want Leicester to be in a better position than when I started here."

That sense of responsibility now runs through pre-season. The WSL 2 opener away at Sheffield United on 6 September (14:00 BST) is creeping into view, and Tierney insists something is shifting.

"You can see there's been a reflection period, there's been a review and you can see the direction we want to go in. We can feel that. We've changed," she said.

"Players change all the time, every team goes through that, but it's important that everyone coming in has the same drive and desire to commit to it. We've got those people and it has been quite refreshing.

We want to be a different Leicester and it's time to change the narrative on who we are and how we're seen."

That narrative, for the past two seasons, has been draining. As captain, Tierney has carried the weekly strain of relegation battles, the constant sense that one bad half, one mistake, might tilt everything.

She is blunt about the toll.

"It's hard as a player. You're trying to give it your all but things just aren't going right," she said. Those struggles, she adds, are "not always acknowledged" outside the club.

This year, she wants something else: enjoyment, identity, and a side that imposes itself on games rather than clinging on.

"We want to be an exciting team, we want to be a team on the ball, we want to be a team that's difficult to beat and we want to surprise some people," Tierney said.

The target is clear. Promotion. But not at any cost.

"Of course the aim is to go up. But it's got to be done in a sustainable way because if I sit here this time next year and we're in a worse position, then there's no point," she added.

"We're going to make sure we're ready to challenge at the top of this league, get promoted and stay in the WSL for years to come."

Leicester have already lost their place in the top tier and a core of their squad. They have not lost their captain. In a summer of exits, that loyalty is a statement in itself. Now the club has to match it.