Manchester City Women Embrace New Era with State-of-the-Art Facility
Manchester City’s women step into a new era every morning, long before a ball is kicked.
They drive through the same campus gates as the men and academy sides, but now peel off into a facility that is unmistakably, unapologetically theirs. Four years in the making, the building is finally open and already lived-in, the new WSL champions having moved in a few weeks ago. You can feel it in the way players talk about it. This isn’t just an upgrade. It’s a statement.
A building built around the champions
City’s women now work in a space tailored to elite performance: dedicated medical, rehab and physio rooms, hydrotherapy pools, recovery zones, chefs and nutritionists whose sole focus is the women’s first team. No more sharing with the academy. No more compromises.
The details tell the story. The circular dressing room mirrors the Etihad Stadium, but with its own twist. Players chose how their names appear on the lockers. The layout is designed to pull the squad into one tight huddle rather than scatter them into corners. It looks like a Premier League dressing room. It feels like a home.
Players and staff had a hand in shaping it. Midfielder Laura Coombs took a leading role in some of the interior design. The message from the club was clear: this isn’t a generic training block with a badge slapped on. This is your space. Make it yours.
Alex Greenwood has seen the best that the game can offer. Over 100 England caps. A spell at Lyon, the eight-time European champions. Yet as she walked reporters through the building, her verdict on this new home landed with weight.
“I absolutely love this building,” she said. “I love turning up at the gates every single morning.” She has always admired City’s facilities, she stressed, but this? “This has just gone to a whole different level.”
Is it the best environment she has had? For a women’s team, she didn’t hesitate.
“For a women's team specifically, yes, for sure,” she replied. St George’s Park remains “incredible”, Lyon’s base “met its needs”. But nothing, she said, comes close to this because it is “specifically for us, in every way.”
Food, culture and control
The facility’s impact runs deeper than fresh paint and new kit rooms. It changes what players put into their bodies, how they recover, how they live their working day.
Nutrition is where Greenwood sees the biggest leap.
“We’re in complete control of everything that we do here, the food, the gym, it's all ours,” she explained. City’s squad is a mix of cultures and tastes. That used to be a challenge in a shared space. Now it’s an advantage.
“We have a lot of different nationalities in our team who like very different foods and we can cater for everyone.”
Emma Deakin, the club’s director of performance services, has watched the shift at close quarters. Moving away from the old base, where the women ate alongside around 200 academy boys aged 14 to 19, has transformed what’s possible.
Over there, the demands were different. The volume was huge. The palate, as she put it, “is probably different as well.” Here, the staff can drill down into the specifics.
What does pre-match fuelling look like for a Japanese player? For a Jamaican forward? For a Brazilian midfielder? They can now be “really bespoke” with menus and planning, tailored to the players’ tastes and their performance needs. It’s not a canteen. It’s a competitive edge.
The heart of the “winning machine”
For head coach Andrée Jeglertz, the real power of the new complex lies in something less tangible but every bit as important: connection.
“Now, you don’t need to book a meeting,” he said. Staff are no longer scattered in different buildings or separated by logistics. “You can walk past them all the time, you can easily go down to the gym. If you want to speak to a player, you can grab them at lunch. The connection is the key thing.”
He spoke from the lounge space, a room that captures exactly what City are trying to build. On one side of the day, it’s an informal area where players sprawl on sofas, switch off, talk about anything but football. On the other, it turns, in minutes, into a sharp tactical theatre.
It was in this room that the squad watched Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Brighton last Wednesday night, the result that confirmed them as WSL champions. The same space will host the forensic breakdown of Chelsea, or the next opponent on the horizon.
“Isn't that pretty cool?” Jeglertz said. “That you can switch from having a relaxed environment and then, five minutes later, it's a sharp, tactical analysis of Chelsea.”
For him, this is the heartbeat of the building.
“This is where we talk about connections,” he explained. Tactical evaluation, frank conversations, honesty. Then, almost in the same breath, it becomes “a free zone” for the players, a place where coaches step back and the squad owns the room.
It is a physical embodiment of what City want to be: serious, demanding, but human. High performance without losing the sense of togetherness.
Dethroning Chelsea – and what comes next
All of this lands at a time when City are not just competing with Chelsea. They have finally knocked them off their perch.
Six straight WSL titles had turned Chelsea into the standard. City have broken that run and now want a dynasty of their own. The new building is not a reward for a title; it is the infrastructure for the next ones.
Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final win over Emma Hayes’ side underlined the power shift. Chelsea, winners of four of the last five FA Cups, will also surrender that crown. City head to Wembley later this month to face Brighton as heavy favourites to take it.
This is how dominance starts: on the pitch, yes, but also in the everyday routines that feed it. In the gym that belongs only to you. In the lounge where a title is confirmed on television and the next one is quietly plotted.
The Bunny Shaw question
There are, of course, clouds on the horizon. One of them looms large up front.
Khadija “Bunny” Shaw, arguably the best centre-forward in the women’s game right now, is being heavily linked with a free transfer away from the club this summer. Reports point towards Chelsea as favourites for her signature. It is the kind of potential swing that can redefine a title race before a ball is kicked.
Greenwood, whose locker sits next to Shaw’s in the one break from numerical order in that circular dressing room, didn’t hide her feelings.
“I would love Bunny to stay at this football club forever,” she said. “She’s an incredible person. I absolutely love her and hope I’m celebrating with her for many years to come.”
City know what they stand to lose if Shaw walks. Goals, presence, fear factor. But they also know what they are building around whoever leads the line.
Jeglertz has made it clear he expects to have a squad capable of defending the title when pre-season starts in July, with or without Shaw. That is the scale of the ambition inside this new home.
Charlotte O’Neill, City’s managing director, framed it in blunt terms.
“We’re trying to build the winning machine,” she said. Look at the facility, she argued, and you see exactly what City Football Group thinks of women’s football and this team.
The question now is simple. In a building designed to create serial winners, how long before City’s women turn this first title into an era?
