Marc Skinner at Manchester United Women: Time to Move On?

A look back at five seasons under a manager who gave us history — but may have taken us as far as he can

There’s a moment near the end of every football season where the numbers stop lying. The spin fades, the “we’re building something” rhetoric quiets down, and you’re left with the table in front of you, asking yourself a simple question: are we going forward or going backwards?

For Manchester United Women, that question is getting harder and harder to answer with any real optimism under Marc Skinner. And after a 2025–26 campaign that delivered a League Cup runners-up finish, a quarter-final exit in the Champions League, a fifth-round FA Cup embarrassment, and a fourth-place WSL finish that saw them miss out on European qualification, I think it’s time for an honest conversation.

Not a cruel one. Not a dismissive one. But an honest one.

Because Marc Skinner has done some genuinely impressive things at this football club. He lifted the FA Cup. He got us into the Champions League. He’s worked through turbulence that would have derailed plenty of managers. But there’s a growing feeling among a large section of the United Women fanbase that the ceiling under him has been reached — and maybe even cracked — and that fresh ideas, fresh energy, and a new voice might be exactly what this squad needs heading into what should be an ambitious next phase for the club.

So let’s go through it. Season by season. Honestly.

The Beginning: 2021–22 — A Reasonable Start

Skinner arrived in the summer of 2021, taking over from Casey Stoney who had resigned under circumstances that were never fully explained to supporters. He came with a decent CV — a spell at Birmingham City Women followed by a stint with Orlando Pride in the NWSL — and there was genuine excitement around the appointment. He was energetic, he was enthusiastic, and he spoke a good game.

His first season ended with a fourth-place WSL finish, a fifth-round FA Cup exit, and a League Cup semi-final. On paper that sounds middling, and it was — but the context matters. The squad Stoney had built was being broken up, there were question marks throughout, and Skinner was trying to implement new ideas in a short pre-season. Alessia Russo was the shining light, finishing as top scorer with nine league goals and 11 in all competitions, and the highest home attendance of 20,241 for the Everton game at Old Trafford showed real appetite from fans.

It wasn’t a spectacular start, but it was a solid foundation. Most supporters were willing to give it time.

The Peak: 2022–23 — Skinner’s Finest Hour

This was it. This was the season that justified the appointment and then some.

United finished second in the WSL on 56 points, just two behind Chelsea, securing Champions League football for the first time in the club’s history. Alessia Russo and Leah Galton both hit double figures in the league, the team played with genuine attacking ambition, and the atmosphere at games was electric. The 30,196 who turned up for the Aston Villa game in December 2022 gave you a sense of just how much this team had captured the imagination of the city.

Yes, they were runners-up in the FA Cup too, losing to Chelsea in the final, which stung. But the overall trajectory felt brilliant. United looked like they were building something real, something sustainable. Skinner looked like the right man. You could make a genuine argument at that point that within a season or two, a WSL title challenge was realistic.

That never really materialised. And that’s one of the central frustrations of the Skinner era.

The Contradictions: 2023–24 — Trophy Glory, League Disaster

The 2023–24 season is the one that perfectly captures the madness of trying to evaluate Marc Skinner. It was simultaneously his greatest triumph and a significant alarm bell.

On 12 May 2024, United beat Tottenham Hotspur 4–0 at Wembley in front of 76,082 fans to lift the FA Cup — the club’s first major honour in women’s football. Ella Toone scored a stunning opener, Rachel Williams headed home a second, and Lucia Garcia added a brace in the second half. It was a brilliant day. Skinner deserves enormous credit for that. No one can take it away from him.

But in the same season, United finished fifth in the WSL. Fifth. After the highs of the season before, after all that talk of progress and ambition, they regressed in the league significantly. Their Champions League debut in the qualifying stages ended early. The dissonance between the cup triumph and the league performance was jarring, and it planted a seed of doubt that has grown ever since.

Skinner, to his credit, acknowledged it publicly, telling MUTV: “Obviously we’re not where we want to be in the league. But we are history makers for Manchester United.” Fair enough. But making history and winning leagues are different things. Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City — United’s rivals — didn’t just want history. They wanted sustained dominance. And that’s the standard United said they were aiming for.

The Slide: 2024–25 — Treading Water

Coming off an FA Cup win, there was optimism. But 2024–25 ended up being another season of mixed signals.

United finished third in the WSL, which sounds decent on the surface. But they were runners-up in the FA Cup — losing 3–0 to Chelsea in the final — and went out of the League Cup in the quarter-finals. Elisabeth Terland stepped up well as the top scorer with 12 goals in all competitions. The headline attendance figure of 31,465 for the Manchester City WSL game in May 2025 showed how big the support remains.

But the season also highlighted a persistent problem: that when it really mattered against the top sides, United couldn’t consistently compete. Skinner was given a contract extension during this season, tying him down until 2027 with an option for a further year. The club clearly backed him. Whether that backing was fully justified, many supporters were already beginning to wonder.

The Breaking Point: 2025–26 — The Wheels Come Off

This is the season where, if you’re being truly honest, the questions became impossible to ignore.

United finished fourth in the WSL. They missed out on Champions League qualification for next season — a brutal blow given that the club had stated in writing that their aim was to win the WSL by 2028. They reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League — which, on its own, sounds fine — but domestically they fell apart. The FA Cup? Out in the fifth round. The League Cup? Another final, another runners-up finish, beaten by Chelsea again.

And then there were the numbers. By May 2026, United had won just one game in their last nine outings. One. A staggering collapse in form that Skinner himself acknowledged, telling the press: “I’m accountable.” The home faithful made their feelings known, with audible discontent from the stands after a late equaliser rescued a 1–1 draw against Brighton — a game United should have been winning comfortably.

Reports emerged in late March 2026 that Skinner was under serious review from club officials, with some described as unhappy with performances and — reportedly — some players themselves concerned. Not qualifying for the Champions League was specifically flagged as a pressure point. Those fears proved founded.

The final week summed it up perfectly. United headed to Stamford Bridge on the last day of the season needing to win, with outside help required to secure a top-three finish. They lost 1–0 to Chelsea, Sam Kerr’s first-half strike the difference. Season over. Champions League gone.

The 2025–26 campaign, although not disastrous, again left United short of feeling like genuine WSL champions in waiting. There were good moments, strong defensive displays, and stretches of consistency, but the same concerns kept resurfacing:

• Struggling to dominate elite opponents
• Slow attacking football
• Overreliance on individual quality
• Lack of tactical flexibility in-game
• Momentum repeatedly disappearing after positive runs

At some stage, “nearly” has to become “actually”.

United are now an established club in the women’s game. The expectation should not merely be qualifying for Europe occasionally or winning one domestic cup every few years. The expectation should be seriously competing for WSL titles consistently.

And right now, it is difficult to argue Skinner is the manager who will take them there.

The Tactical Problem

This is where many United Women supporters have the deepest frustrations, and it’s a legitimate conversation to have.

Skinner has operated predominantly in a 4–2–3–1 shape throughout his tenure, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with that system, what bothers people is the lack of adaptability when it’s not working. Too often in big games — particularly against Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester City — United have looked tactically rigid and been made to pay for it.

Against the top sides, the numbers are damning. Over his tenure, United have conceded 26 WSL goals against Chelsea alone, 21 against Manchester City, and 15 against Arsenal. Those are the three sides they need to compete with to win the league. They’ve managed just six goals against Chelsea in nine WSL meetings. That is a significant tactical problem, not simply a quality gap.

There have also been questions raised about Skinner’s in-game management. The ability to recognise when a game plan isn’t working and make meaningful changes — whether that’s a tactical switch or a personnel change — has not always been convincing. Too many games have drifted away in the second half with United still playing the same way they were in the first.

The criticism around youth development is pointed too. United have reportedly given the fewest minutes to players under the age of 21 compared to the rest of the WSL in 2025–26. That’s a concern for the club’s long-term pathway and somewhat contradicts the club’s stated ambitions for progression.

Set-piece defending has also been a recurring weakness. Over multiple seasons now, United have conceded from dead-ball situations at frustrating regularity, particularly in the big games. It’s the kind of structural problem you’d expect to have been addressed and resolved years in.

The Player Welfare Problem: Guerrero and Geyse

This is the section that doesn’t get talked about enough, and it should.

Because beyond the tactics and the league positions and the cup runs, there have been two very public and very uncomfortable stories involving players under Skinner’s watch that raise serious questions about the culture inside the club — and they can’t just be waved away.

Irene Guerrero

When Manchester United signed Irene Guerrero in the summer of 2023, fresh off winning the Women’s World Cup with Spain, it felt like a real statement of intent. A World Cup winner, a technically gifted central midfielder — exactly the kind of player you’d want if you were serious about challenging for the WSL title.

What followed was one of the most distressing player welfare stories in recent WSL memory.

Guerrero’s season was disrupted early by a knee injury, and when she returned, she found herself almost entirely frozen out. She made just seven appearances across all competitions, only one of which came as a start, and accumulated a grand total of 26 WSL minutes. For a player of her quality and pedigree, that is extraordinary.

But it wasn’t just the lack of game time. In November 2024, after leaving United for Mexican side Club América, Guerrero gave a lengthy interview to Spanish newspaper Marca in which she described just how bad things had got mentally. What she said was startling.

“I remember days where, mid-training session, when you see that each week you’re repeating exactly the same thing, going to the bathroom and having to let it out, cry, wash my face and go out to train as if nothing had happened,” she told Marca.

“I reached a very important, very hard mental limit and I tried to make it so that nobody would notice it. Obviously, the team-mates who had spent time with me knew me and knew that something was wrong with me, but I tried as much as possible to make it so that my personal situation didn’t affect the group.”

“I’d arrive home, I’d be with my partner and I’d say, ‘I want to go home, I don’t want to be here, I’m not enjoying it, I’m not happy and I feel as if it’s not worth everything I’ve sacrificed to come to another country. The reward I’m getting is zero for all the work and effort I’ve put in.”

She also described “hitting rock bottom” and “not understanding why I had left a place where I was doing well and believed I could compete to go to a club where they were denying me as a footballer.”

When asked directly about Guerrero’s comments — specifically the bathroom crying — Skinner responded: “That’s never nice to hear, but we know we have the pieces in place for players to seek any kind of conversations they want.” He added that he had “a great support team behind the scenes” and that “not everybody is going to agree with your decision-making.”

That response will not have satisfied many people. A World Cup winner described crying alone in a bathroom during training sessions at your club, and the manager’s response was essentially to say the support structures are fine and not everyone agrees with selection decisions. It felt dismissive of something that deserved a more searching self-reflection.

You can read the full original reporting on this story via Yahoo Sports and the Morning Star, Skinner’s response via OneFootball, and The Guardian’s wider investigation into the training environment and growing frustrations around the club here.

Geyse

Then came the Geyse situation, and this one, frankly, was worse from a reputational standpoint.

United signed the Brazilian forward Geyse from Barcelona in August 2023. In January 2025, her brother passed away, and she was granted compassionate leave to return home to Brazil. What allegedly happened next caused significant outrage.

Reports — including from The Guardian and The Telegraph — alleged that the club attempted to arrange a loan move for Geyse to clubs in the United States while she was still on compassionate leave, attending her brother’s funeral. Her agent, Luis Filipe Silva, told The Telegraph that there was “no relationship whatsoever” between the player and Skinner, and accused the club of trying to offload her at the worst possible moment.

After returning and playing in a WSL win over Leicester, Geyse posted a raw and emotional message on Instagram describing an “agonising and lonely feeling.” It was a public expression of unhappiness from a player at a club that prides itself on its culture.

When Skinner was asked directly about the agent’s comments claiming there was no relationship, he gave a response that raised eyebrows: “I won’t be using this platform to have a conversation about that.” He confirmed United were in talks with Gotham FC over a loan, framing it as something that would allow Geyse to “look after her wellbeing.”

The club’s version was that they had provided extensive support — a translator, psychologists, wellbeing teams, one-to-one sessions — and that Geyse had found it difficult being far from home and family. That may well be true. But the timing of the alleged loan push, the public Instagram post, and the agent’s comments painted a picture that was very difficult to defend regardless of the welfare provisions in place.

You can read the BBC’s reporting on this story here, 90min’s coverage here, and The Peoples Person’s detailed breakdown here.

A Pattern?

Taken individually, you could argue both cases have context and nuance. Guerrero’s injury disrupted her season significantly, and the loan suggestions for Geyse could be genuinely framed as a welfare solution. But taken together, they contribute to a picture of a dressing room culture that has not always felt safe or supportive for players who weren’t in Skinner’s plans. Two high-profile foreign players, both struggling to feel valued, both going public with their distress — that is not a coincidence, and it’s not something a manager can simply shrug off with references to support teams and open-door policies.

It also raises a question about squad management more broadly. If players of international calibre — a World Cup winner and a player signed from Barcelona — are being made to feel invisible, what does that say about how the environment is being managed? The Guerrero situation in particular is hard to reconcile with the idea that this is a dressing room being run in a player-centred way.

The Broader Context: Everyone Else Is Moving

Perhaps the most compelling argument for change is what’s happening around United in the WSL.

As one analysis noted, every other team in the top four has changed managers since Skinner was first appointed. Arsenal brought in Renée Slegers in January 2025 and she led them to the UEFA Women’s Champions League. Chelsea appointed Sonia Bompastor in 2024 and she won the domestic treble in her first season. Manchester City appointed Andrée Jeglertz last summer and they were pushing for the WSL title. And in 2025–26 they was the first team to win the league outside of Chelsea since 18–19 season.

While those clubs refreshed and revitalised, United stayed put. The argument that stability is a virtue is understandable — especially given the turbulence at the men’s club — but there is a point at which stability becomes stagnation. When the three clubs directly above you have all brought in new managers and all seen upward trajectories, it raises a legitimate question about whether the problem is the tools or the toolbox.

Skinner’s contract runs to 2027 with an option beyond that. The club would face a cost in moving him on. But staying put also has costs — missing European football damages recruitment, affects morale, and sends a message that ambition has stalled.

In Fairness: What Skinner Has Done Well

It would be genuinely unfair and dishonest not to give credit where it’s owed, because there is real credit to give.

The FA Cup win in 2024 was historic. No one had cracked the Chelsea-Arsenal-City grip on the competition since Birmingham City in 2012. Skinner and his players broke that monopoly in some style at Wembley. He’s shown an ability to build for cup football and get his teams up for the big occasion — reaching three consecutive FA Cup finals is a remarkable record for a club of United’s relative size.

The 2022–23 WSL season remains outstanding work. Getting a club that was only re-founded in 2018 to second place in the country’s top division is a genuine achievement, and the football was often genuinely exciting to watch.

His man-management has been largely respected by players publicly, even through difficult transitions. Losing players like Alessia Russo, Ona Batlle, and Mary Earps while still competing at the level United have is not nothing. He’s rebuilt squads, integrated new signings, and kept the club competitive during periods of genuine upheaval — including the controversy around the women’s team being moved out of their training facilities at Carrington.

He’s also been largely dignified under pressure. When the criticism has ramped up — and it has ramped up significantly in the last 18 months — he hasn’t hidden, deflected responsibility onto players, or thrown colleagues under the bus. “I’m accountable,” said in the final weeks of the 2025–26 season, was a decent thing to say even if it came too late.

Elisabeth Terland has flourished under him. Goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce developed into one of the WSL’s top stoppers with the best save percentage over two campaigns. Defenders Maya Le Tissier and Dominique Janssen have been among the best in the league in terms of passing metrics. These are not accidents — good coaching and structure contributed to those individual improvements.

The Ineos Factor: A Manager Working With One Hand Tied Behind His Back

Here’s the part where the argument shifts, and where, in the interests of genuine fairness, it has to be said clearly: some of what has gone wrong at Manchester United Women is not Marc Skinner’s fault. Not even close.

The ownership and investment picture at this football club has been a shambles in ways that would hamstring any manager, and to place the entire burden of the team’s underperformance on Skinner’s shoulders without acknowledging the structural failures above him would be dishonest.

Let’s start with the most damaging quote in recent memory from a top-flight football club owner about his own team.

Speaking to the United We Stand fanzine, the club’s co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe described the men’s team as the “main issue” and referred to the women’s side as “girls” and “an opportunity” — comments that caused an immediate furore among supporters and were widely covered, including in a detailed BBC Sport piece examining exactly what was going wrong at United Women (BBC Sport — ‘The club should be equal’: What’s going on with Man Utd Women?).

Read those words again. The owner of Manchester United Women described his own women’s team as an afterthought, a side project, something to return to once the “main issue” was fixed. The backlash was immediate and justified. For a women’s squad that was actively competing in the Champions League, grinding through a WSL season, and trying to push towards the club’s stated 2028 title ambition, being publicly described in those terms by the man writing the cheques was demoralising in the extreme.

And it wasn’t just words. The structural reality at United Women under Ineos has been one of repeated budget constraints, disorganised recruitment, and a sense that the women’s side was perpetually at the back of the queue. Agents negotiating with the club reported frustrations to BBC Sport about the “lengthy process” and what they described as “disorganised structures” inside the club. The Athletic ran a detailed investigation highlighting “a lack of clarity regarding budget and strategy” — a damning set of findings for a club that had publicly announced an ambition to win the WSL by 2028.

The Alessia Russo situation is perhaps the starkest example of institutional failure — and it predates Ineos, which is important context. Russo, United’s star striker and one of the best forwards in the country, first rejected a contract offer in June 2022. The club exercised their option to keep her for another year, but talks over a new long-term deal stalled. Arsenal came in January 2023 with not one but two world-record bids — the second believed to be close to £500,000 — and United turned both down, insisting she wasn’t for sale at any price.

Then they let her walk out the door on a free transfer in the summer anyway.

It is understood the club was slow to respond to Russo’s personal demands, and that she had been open to staying had things moved faster and with more clarity. Instead, their best player — who scored 26 goals in 59 appearances — left for Arsenal for nothing. The BBC reported that United “had a lower budget than at least five clubs in the WSL and have struggled to compete with player salaries.” That budget reality did not emerge overnight, and it didn’t improve meaningfully when Ineos took over football operations.

Then came the facilities saga. In the summer of 2024, Manchester United Women were moved out of their Carrington training base and into temporary portable buildings to make way for a £50 million renovation of the men’s first-team facilities. The women’s squad spent time training at the FA’s St George’s Park headquarters before a pre-season camp in Marbella. When asked about plans for the women’s team’s long-term facility situation, Ratcliffe told Bloomberg: “We haven’t got into that level of detail with the women’s team yet.”

That one sentence told you everything about where the women’s team sat in the pecking order.

Skinner was put in the position of defending the club publicly, telling reporters that what was reported “could not be further from the truth” and insisting the facilities situation would ultimately benefit the team. He was, in a sense, caught between supporting the institution he works for and acknowledging the legitimate frustrations his players and staff were experiencing.

One commentator put it as bluntly as anyone: “Since INEOS has come in, the reducing budgets… it is usually the women’s team that feel the brunt of that. Manchester United could have one of the best women’s teams in the world.” (FourFourTwo)

Look at what Chelsea did. When Sonia Bompastor arrived, owner Alexis Ohanian invested £20 million into the women’s club as a minority stakeholder. That kind of targeted, committed financial backing translated directly into squad quality, depth, and a domestic treble. Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City all had ownership structures that visibly and publicly backed their women’s teams. United’s ownership structure did the opposite — it deprioritised them, squeezed their budget, and made the manager defend decisions that no manager should have to defend.

Does this excuse every tactical decision Skinner has made? No. Does it explain why a club with United’s brand, support, and stated ambitions has consistently fallen short against the top three? Absolutely, at least in part. The transfer market reality for United Women has been fundamentally different to that of their rivals, and any honest assessment of Skinner’s tenure has to weigh his record against the tools he was actually given — not the tools the club’s 2028 rhetoric suggested he would have.

It also raises a wider, uncomfortable question: if a new manager comes in but the ownership culture and investment framework remains the same, will anything actually change? That’s not a reason to keep Skinner necessarily. But it is a reason why replacing him alone won’t be enough.

The Verdict

Look, there’s no clean answer here. Marc Skinner is not a bad manager. He’s shown real quality at moments throughout his tenure, and dismissing his contributions entirely would be both wrong and unfair.

But football moves fast, and the WSL has moved especially fast. The gap between where United are and where Chelsea, Arsenal, and now Manchester City operate is arguably wider now than it was three years ago — despite United having more resources and more support than they had when Skinner arrived. That should not be the case after five seasons in charge.

The tactical inflexibility is real. The inability to consistently get results against the top three is real. The youth development concerns are real. The end-of-season collapse in 2025–26, finishing without Champions League football, is real and consequential.

Most pressingly — and this is the part that matters most if the club is genuine about its stated ambition of winning the WSL by 2028 — what does the evidence of the last two seasons suggest about whether Skinner can deliver that? Honestly? The evidence is not convincing.

The club has invested in this team. The fanbase has grown enormously. The infrastructure is improving. This is a squad that, with the right manager and a fresh tactical approach, could seriously push Arsenal and Chelsea. The pieces are largely there.

Sometimes the kindest and most constructive thing a club can do — for the manager, for the players, for the supporters — is make a change. To thank someone genuinely for what they’ve given, and then open a new chapter.

Marc Skinner gave Manchester United Women their first FA Cup. That will always mean something. But this club isn’t building a museum. It’s building a team that wants to win the WSL, compete in Europe, and stand toe to toe with the best.

On the current evidence, that’s a job for someone new.

Thanks for sticking with it to the end — it’s a debate that clearly means a lot to a lot of people, and one that isn’t going away any time soon.