Lauren Hemp scores twice as Manchester City beat Liverpool 4-2 in WSL on 18 September 2026
Manchester City defeated Liverpool 4-2 in a Women's Super League match on 18 September 2026, with Lauren Hemp scoring two goals and a 90th-minute own goal from Grace Fisk turning the game in City's favour before Hemp added a stoppage-time counterattack strike.
The result extended City’s winning start to the new WSL season and came after an entertaining contest in which Liverpool pushed the league leaders hard; Gareth Taylor, taking on his former side, saw his team make the holders dig deep. Thirteen minutes into the match the crowd rose to applaud the late Matt Beard — supporters across the WSL and WSL2 had been invited to mark a year since Beard’s death on 20 September 2025 — recalling the 2013 season when he won the first of two consecutive WSL titles with Liverpool.
Hemp opened the scoring after meeting Carlotta Wamser’s incisive inside ball and placing a low finish into the far bottom corner, her first WSL goal since last November’s Manchester derby. That strike was Hemp’s first goal for club football since an FA Cup goal in February and her first goal since scoring for England in a victory over Spain in April; she had earlier seen a rising effort touched over the bar by Khiara Keating.
Liverpool responded through Alice Bergström after a misunderstanding between Wamser and Alex Greenwood allowed Vivien Endemann to set up the equaliser, which Bergström calmly tucked past Ayaka Yamashita. In the opening half Liverpool dominated possession in City’s half and forced a sequence of errors that unsettled the hosts.
Endemann then put Liverpool ahead when she fired a shot that Yamashita could only help into the net, giving the visitors a 2-1 lead before the half-hour mark; Endemann had opened her Liverpool account with a debut goal at Charlton Athletic on the season’s opening weekend. City were under pressure for long spells as Liverpool’s pressing created problems for the champions.
Khadija Shaw struck a post after rounding Keating and then pounced on a Keating error shortly before half-time to level the score at 2-2. Keating, who was returning to face her former club after her summer move to Liverpool, produced a fine second-half reaction save to keep out a Shaw attempt that appeared destined for the top corner after Shaw met a low Hemp cross.
City rebuilt pressure late in the match and the introduction of Grace Clinton inside the final 15 minutes added attacking impetus; Clinton’s near-post cross proved too difficult for Fisk to clear and was turned into her own net at the 90th minute to put City 3-2 up. With Liverpool committing players forward in stoppage time Hemp finished a counterattack to make it 4-2, a result achieved in line with Andrée Jeglertz’s often-repeated mantra: "we will find a way to win", a phrase that the club has imprinted on the walls of their training base.
The victory ensured Manchester City remain top of the WSL for at least another week and preserved their status as the only WSL side with a 100% record after the opening two rounds of fixtures; City have also still not dropped any points in home league matches since Andrée Jeglertz took charge in the summer of 2025.