An historic Continental Cup victory over Arsenal would follow in our first season as a professional outfit.
City have since gone on to claim every available domestic honour, even going unbeaten across an entire Barclays Women’s Super League campaign in the process.
Below, you can find some of the impressive numbers behind our success since that historic day on 24 January 2014…
Most appearances
Unsurprisingly, it’s Steph Houghton who leads the way in terms of overall appearances for the Club.
The last founding member from our first season as a professional outfit, the captain has featured 218 times for Manchester City.
She is one of only two players to reach a double century for the Club, doing so in March 2021, and has found the net 19 times during that period.
Among the current squad, Demi Stokes’ 197 matches comes next in our all-time list, with Ellie Roebuck and Lauren Hemp also making over a century of appearances for Gareth Taylor’s side.
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Goals, goals, goals
City have played 282 competitive matches in all competitions since 2014, finding the net an astonishing 696 times in the process.
That equates to just shy of 2.5 goals per game across the past nine years.
Georgia Stanway is the Club’s record goalscorer with 67 of those 696 strikes, with Lauren Hemp (47) and Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw (31) the most among the current squad.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of those goals have come in the WSL, where we have found the net 382 times at an average of 2.37 per game.
WSL delight
Gareth Taylor’s side boast an impressive overall record in the WSL, only finishing outside the top three once; in our first season back in 2014.
We have claimed victory in 112 of our 161 league matches, with our win percentage of 69.6% bettered only by Chelsea across the entire division since 2014.
And alongside that previously mentioned goal rate is an equally impressive defensive record, which has seen us concede an average of just 0.78 times per match across the past nine years.
Again, only Chelsea’s 0.71 per match can top that incredible ratio since 2014 but, across the WSL’s entire existence, City’s rate comes out on top.
Home is where the heart is
Focusing once again on the WSL, City boast a truly phenomenal record at the Academy Stadium.
We have won 58 of our 81 matches on home soil in the league, losing on just nine occasions.
That means that, on average, we have tasted defeat once every nine matches at the Academy Stadium in the WSL, or once per year.
We have found the net 201 times during that sequence, a rate of 2.48 per match, while conceding just 59 in the process.
Purple patches
City have chalked up some incredible runs of form during our nine years in the WSL.
From 6 December 2020 – 4 April 2021, Gareth Taylor’s side won all 12 of our league matches, with the run only halted following a thrilling 2-2 draw against Chelsea.
That remains the second-longest winning run in the competition’s history, with Arsenal’s 14-match sequence in 2022 the only streak able to better that tally.
Incredibly, City claimed the 2016 WSL title without tasting defeat, with our unbeaten league run stretching across 31 matches from 26 April 2015 until 25 May 2017.
Again, that sequence is the second longest in the competition’s history, bettered only by Chelsea’s 33-match run which ended in January 2021.
Record attendances
City’s 1-1 draw with Manchester United in December 2022 was witnessed by 44,259 supporters at the Etihad Stadium - the third highest attendance in WSL history.
Meanwhile, our record crowd at the Academy Stadium stands was broken in February 2022, when 5,317 witnessed a memorable 1-0 triumph over our cross-city rivals.
