Third on the list in these stakes is our decisive effort in the corresponding Villa fixture on the opening weekend of the following season, netted by Rachel Williams.
This time at Villa Park rather than the Bescot Stadium in Walsall, Williams ensured United got the 2023/24 term off to a winning start, by tracking Nikita Parris’s deflected cross as it looped up in the air, before heading the ball back across goal and into the far bottom corner, in the 92nd minute.
Our fourth and fifth latest WSL winners, meanwhile, both came in the 91st minute of their respective fixtures, in the 2022/23 season.
Of the two, we had to wait just that little bit longer for Lucia Garcia’s derby decider at home to City, a right-footed strike which had enough power to beat goalkeeper Khiara Keating and officially clinch UEFA Champions League qualification for the first time in the team’s history.
It was clocked just five seconds beyond Alessia Russo’s famous turnaround-completer away to Arsenal, earlier that campaign.
Russo’s headed connection with another precise Zelem delivery was our first-ever stoppage-time settler in the WSL, and the cue for unforgettable scenes in front of our away end at the Emirates Stadium, as a United team in our neon-green third kit of the time wheeled over in jubilation.
