Bunny Shaw stars as Manchester City end title-winning season in style

Bunny Shaw signed off a dominant Manchester City season with a two-goal burst as the champions swept past West Ham United 4-1 and turned a final-day trip to London into a celebration of their league title. Jade Rose put City ahead in the 13th minute, Shaw added the decisive second-half strikes, and Laura Coombs capped the afternoon with a farewell goal in the last match of her professional career.

The result mattered more as a statement than a necessity. City had already secured the Women’s Super League crown when Arsenal drew 1-1 with Brighton & Hove Albion on 6 May, and their 4-1 victory on 16 May completed a campaign that left them on 55 points, level with their best-ever total. They had been top since a 2-1 win over Everton on 9 November, and they never really let go of the race after that.

Shaw finished the league season with 21 goals, the highest total in the division, underlining how City’s title was built on elite finishing as much as control. Rose’s early goal set the tone, but the longer-term significance lay in the depth around Shaw. Coombs, who had announced on 30 April that she would retire at the end of the season, delivered one last moment of quality to make the afternoon feel as much like a tribute as a routine league win.

Coombs leaves after 19 years in professional football, 154 appearances for City and 27 goals, along with an FA Cup and a League Cup. England manager Sarina Wiegman has already publicly saluted her career and said England hoped to celebrate her in a future match. That gave City’s final league fixture an emotional edge rare even for a title-winning side, especially with Coombs scoring in what was her final professional appearance.

The wider WSL picture showed a league in transition but still defined by a small group at the top. Chelsea’s run of six straight league titles ended, yet their 1-0 win over Manchester United, sealed by Sam Kerr’s farewell goal, still carried them into Champions League football and left Kerr tied with Fran Kirby as Chelsea’s all-time leading scorer. City finished first on 55 points, Arsenal second on 51 and Chelsea third on 49, a reminder that the championship remains concentrated among a few clubs even as the league prepares to expand from 12 to 14 teams. That expansion will raise the stakes at the bottom, where relegation already hangs over the last-placed side, but the title race still belongs to the established powers.