The WSL's Big Four Are Losing Their Grip on the Table
Five matchdays into 2026-27, Arsenal sit tenth and Manchester United are above them as London City and Tottenham push for Europe — Opta's data shows why the hierarchy is wobbling.
Five rounds into the 2026-27 Women's Super League season, the league table no longer reads the way pre-season form guides suggested it would, according to The Analyst (Opta). Arsenal are tenth with five points from five games, while Manchester United sit seventh. London City Lionesses and Tottenham occupy third and fourth, both in form to chase continental qualification.
That order matters because of how rare it is. The Analyst notes Manchester United have finished above Arsenal in the WSL table only once before, in 2022-23, and neither club has ever finished a season outside the division's top five. Five matchdays is not a season, but the shape of this one already looks unusual.
Points dropped against the big four tell their own story
The clearest statistical marker of disruption is points per game, a measure of average return from fixtures that strips out how many games each side has played. The Analyst's data shows clubs outside the traditional big four are averaging 0.42 points per game against Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Manchester City this season — the highest rate in a WSL campaign since 2015's 0.43, and a sharp rise from 0.30 last season.
Results across the opening weeks back up the trend. London City beat Manchester United before losing to West Ham, who were then beaten by United, who were in turn beaten by Tottenham — who then shipped six goals away to London City. The outcomes form a loop rather than a hierarchy, which is precisely what an unpredictable mid-table looks like.
Expected goals suggests some of this could be noise
Expected goals, or xG, estimates the likelihood a shot results in a goal based on factors like location and build-up, giving a measure of chance quality independent of whether the shot went in. The Analyst flags that teams with the higher xG total have won only 62.9% of matches so far this season — the lowest conversion-to-result rate since Opta's current xG model launched in 2021-22.
That figure is a caution against reading too much into results alone. If the team creating the better chances is losing more often than usual, some of the shake-up at the top could reflect short-term variance in finishing and goalkeeping rather than a genuine shift in quality between sides.
The broader scoring picture reinforces that caution. The gap between goals actually scored and goals expected across the whole league stands at minus 3.88, the first time that figure has been negative in a WSL season under Opta's updated model. Sides across the division, not only the big four, are underperforming their underlying chances.
Margins of victory show the chasing pack can still blow games open
Even allowing for that underperformance, the scale of some results from outside the traditional elite is hard to explain away as noise. London City's 6-1 win over Tottenham, Brighton's 5-1 victory against Charlton, Liverpool's 4-0 win over Charlton, and Tottenham's own 7-0 and 4-0 wins over Crystal Palace and Aston Villa have produced five victories by four goals or more from non-big-four clubs this season.
The Analyst notes that has happened in a full WSL season only once before, in 2020-21, when there were eight such margins; last season produced just two. By contrast, only one traditional big four side, Chelsea, has managed a win by four or more goals this term, a 5-0 defeat of Manchester United on the second matchday.
Tottenham's attacking output has been especially pointed. Their 7-0 win over Crystal Palace saw all seven goals arrive after half-time, the first time in WSL history a side has scored seven goals in a single half of a match. Spurs' 16 goals this season match Manchester City's tally for the most in the division, with London City one behind on 15.
What winning game state reveals about the new contenders
Winning game state measures the proportion of total match time a team spends ahead on the scoreboard, a way of capturing control beyond the final score. London City have spent 69% of their minutes in a winning position this season, second only to Chelsea's 73%, while drawing for just 15% of the time — the lowest share in the league — and trailing for 16%, the third-lowest.
Those numbers describe a side rarely troubled once it has its nose in front, which fits with London City's run of three straight top-flight wins, their best start in the club's history, in which they have scored 12 and conceded only two. Manager Eder Maestre's squad overhaul had prompted debate about whether a group of new signings would gel quickly; the early data suggests they have.
None of this settles whether the WSL's hierarchy has permanently shifted or is simply absorbing an unusually turbulent opening block of fixtures. The xG figures point toward some regression to come, but the margins of victory, the points dropped by the big four, and London City and Tottenham's current league positions are facts already on the board, not projections.