Manchester City continued their winning start to the new Women’s Super League season but the defending champions needed a 90th-minute own goal from Grace Fisk to help them edge past an ever-improving Liverpool side after an entertaining game in which Lauren Hemp scored twice.

Fisk inadvertently turned Grace Clinton’s dangerous cross into her own net to put City 3-2 up and then – with Liverpool searching for an equaliser and committing players forward deep in stoppage time – Hemp added another on the counterattack to make it 4-2 and widen the margin of victory, but that slightly masked how well the visitors had played. Gareth Taylor – taking on his former side – will have taken significant encouragement from his Liverpool team’s performance, on a night when they made the league leaders dig deep.

Nevertheless, the result ensured that City, who had already been the only WSL side who held a 100% winning record after the opening two rounds of games and now will certainly stay top of the table for at least another week, have still not dropped any points in home league fixtures since Andrée Jeglertz took charge in the summer of 2025.

It had looked as though Jeglertz’s side were set for a routine evening when Hemp had met Carlotta Wamser’s incisive inside ball and sent a controlled, low finish into the far bottom corner. It was Hemp’s first goal since scoring for England in a victory over Spain in April, her first club goal since scoring in the FA Cup in February and her first WSL goal of the year, since last November’s Manchester derby. She could have found the net earlier in this contest but her rising effort was touched over the bar by Khiara Keating.

Moments after Hemp’s opening goal, with 13 minutes on the clock, the entire crowd rose to applaud the late Matt Beard, the former Liverpool manager, in reference to the year 2013, when he won the first of two consecutive WSL titles with Liverpool. Supporters of clubs across the WSL and WSL2 have been invited to applaud at the same time in games across this weekend, to mark a year since Beard’s death on 20 September 2025. Beard was a much-loved character and hugely successful coach at Liverpool, whose performance – particularly in the remainder of the first half – would have done him proud.

The away side deservedly struck back and found themselves 2-1 up before the half-hour mark, as their pressing gave the defending champions a headache. Nonetheless, Liverpool were helped by some untidy defending from the home side.

First, a misunderstanding between Wamser and Alex Greenwood allowed Vivien Endemann to set up Alice Bergström for the equaliser, which she calmly tucked past Ayaka Yamashita.

With the ball predominantly in the City half in the opening half an hour, Liverpool were forcing the hosts into mistakes and eventually Endemann – who had opened her Liverpool account with a debut goal at Charlton Athletic on the season’s opening weekend – fired in a shot that Yamashita got a hand to but could only help into the net.

Khadija Shaw struck a post from a difficult angle, after rounding Keating, as last season’s Golden Boot winner tried to get her side back level, but the Jamaican was not to be denied as she pounced on a Keating error shortly before half-time to make it 2-2. Keating – returning to face her former club after her summer move to Liverpool – did well to block Hemp’s strike but was unable to prevent the ball trickling into the path of the onrushing Shaw, who gratefully poked home.

Keating impressed in the second half with a fine reaction save, as she kept out a Shaw effort that had looked destined for the top corner at her near post, after the Jamaican had met a low Hemp cross. But the hosts began to build pressure and the introduction of the lively Clinton, inside the final 15 minutes, boosted their attacking threat. Her near-post cross proved too difficult for Fisk to clear and – just as they did on countless occasions last term – Manchester City lived up to Jeglertz’s mantra of “we will find a way to win”, a message that has been imprinted on the walls of their training base.