The entire season saw Melbourne City in the bottom half of the league table. Perhaps the most inconsistent team in the league seeing themselves on each side of blowout games. 

The club will once again display an impressive rosters with many of the top Matildas.

The former three-peat champions are looking to solidify their reign as the best club in W-League as being the first team to claim four titles. The race for four between them and Sydney FC could be accomplished this season as both teams are arguably favorites to win the Grand Final.

While Sydney are coming off their own title win, Melbourne will look to better their 6-1-5 record from a year ago.

 

WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM LAST SEASON?

The biggest takeaway from last season has to be that City is beatable. 

Since joining the W-League in 2015, Melbourne City had been the champion year in and year out. They asserted their dominance amongst the other teams, proving they are the best.

Then last season, City could not get anything going in their favor. They started the year off with a 2-0 loss to Canberra United and never got more than three wins in a row. 

If you look at the statistics, however not much changed for City. They scored and gave up the same amount of goals that won them the title in 2017-18. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the competition in the W-League improved as a whole and the names on City’s roster no longer intimidated their opponents. 

One of the players returning from City is Rhali Dobson and she fully grasps that City has to rely on more than just their talent for this upcoming season.

“Last year it was disappointing. Certain things just didn’t work out and that happens sometimes. You look at teams across the world, you can have the best team in the world on paper but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to win a game,” she says.

“It’s about how you gel together. It’s about how you implement everything asked of you as players and as a team. That was just a learning curve for everyone and that’s okay. That’s all a part of playing a sport. So we take what happened last year and take what is being asked now to improve this year.”