Where the WSL-chasing women’s team fit in ‘Newcastle United 2.0’

They are blazing a trail for a remodelled Newcastle United: top of WSL2, unbeaten in the league, pushing for promotion, brimming with ambition and, this weekend, facing second-place Sunderland in a north-east derby fixture which is being billed locally as “El Lassico”. At a club where change has been a constant companion since their Saudi-led takeover five years ago, Tanya Oxtoby and her Newcastle team are demonstrating how it can be done.In her office at the women’s team training ground at Cochrane Park, Grace Williams shoots back. The director of football for Newcastle’s women’s side had been asked where they fit under the heading “Newcastle 2.0,” which is how David Hopkinson, the chief executive, described the next stage of the club’s development, in an interview with The Athletic in August. “It’s not under, it’s alongside,” she says.This clarification is important. The Premier League dominates in England and beyond — discourse, publicity, hyperbole, money — but Newcastle now have a formalised mission statement and top of the code is “One club. We are all in.” The men’s and women’s teams have their own context and requirements, but in terms of attitudes and status, there is no substantive differentiation between the two.As Hopkinson puts it: “The only way to view Newcastle United Women is as part of Newcastle. It’s not a bolt-on. If it’s a bolt-on, then it can wither. It’s a huge part of our mandate and our mission.”The women’s team were a passion project for Amanda Staveley, the financier who drove through the takeover and then part-owned the club. Having previously operated under the club’s charitable foundation, they were brought into Newcastle proper, securing consecutive promotions up into the second tier under Becky Langley’s management, going full time and fully professional. Back when it all started, players paid to play and juggled other jobs. Langley washed their kit.Newcastle’s growth was phenomenal, but Langley left last year, a couple of months after Williams was appointed, and was replaced by Oxtoby, who had most recently managed Northern Ireland and had spent two seasons as assistant coach to Emma Hayes at Chelsea. Her recruitment was led by Williams, but involved Hopkinson, Ross Williams, the sporting director, Jack Ross, who is now assistant sporting director, and James Bunce, director of performance. All in.In the summer window, they signed 11 new players and their squad is crammed with senior internationals. They have moved training grounds, they are playing seven games at St James’ Park this season and the rest at Gateshead International Stadium and everything is geared to going up and then progressing. If it is a less homely, less wide-eyed club, it is also bigger and more integrated. This is their era of meaning business.After seven games in WSL2, Newcastle have won six and drawn one, giving them a three-point lead over Sunderland. “We’re not counting any chickens,” Hopkinson says, which is probably wise given that only one side is guaranteed automatic promotion. But they got their transfers done early and are reaping the benefit of preparation and gelling. “Really strong performances, great physical dominance; it’s been a really exciting start for us,” says Williams.For the record, Hopkinson’s searing timetable for Newcastle to be in the conversation for major honours applies here, too. “When it’s presented to our people internally or to the investment community or to sponsors, it’s all on the same slide,” he says. “There aren’t two slides here. Our ambition is to consistently and credibly compete for the top prizes in global football, for the Premier League and the WSL, by 2030.”“You could argue the pressure is a little bit different because we have to get into the top league first,” Williams says. “We can’t be competing at the top level until we get there and that means the expectation on us first and foremost is to be promoted.“But we haven’t shied away from that; we’re very open and ambitious about it with our players and staff. That’s what we need to achieve and then, as we aim towards 2030, it’s about starting to compete at the top of the game.”In part, this explains the calibre of their signings. Although they are not there yet, Newcastle are looking ahead. “It’s widely known and accepted that when you get promoted you often go from being an in-possession to an out-of-possession team,” says Williams. In other words, winning sides tend to win a little less. “I definitely don’t want us to change,” she says. “We’ve tried to create a recruitment strategy for playing how we want to play.”“There was a big pull towards Newcastle for me with the ambition they have and the goals they’re setting out,” says Martha Thomas, the Scotland striker, who has played in the WSL with Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and West Ham United. “I didn’t want to join somewhere that was just staying steady. I wanted to join a club that was pushing on and backing the women’s team completely.”Thomas, 30, has already scored nine goals in all competitions this season. While she will not be drawn into stating that Newcastle are a WSL club in all but name — “this is only the beginning and it’s important we don’t get complacent,” she says — becoming one in practice is why she is here. “We’ve got the facilities, we’ve got the backing of the club, we’ve got the players, we’ve got the squad, we’ve got the coaching staff and all those things,” she says.At her other clubs, Williams has done it all, starting or restarting women’s programmes. Her own start came at Watford, the team she supported as a child, “managing staff, managing a budget, running a football department, going into commercial pitches and also taking the kit home for my mum to wash,” she says. “I got my hands dirty in every element of it. I’m sure I annoyed everybody at Watford, constantly asking, ‘How do I do this, how do I do that’?”Watford were promoted to WSL2. Bristol City, her second posting, were promoted to the WSL, as were Crystal Palace, her third. So what does it take?“It’s the golden question,” she says. “I would never disregard all the other elements that come into it, but at the centre of it all is culture, the people who are around, the players, the coaches, everybody. What attracted me to Newcastle was that sense of, ‘We want to be in the WSL and here’s how we think we can do it’.“There was a really strong ambition to support women’s football, a care about the players and the game and how we can make an impact. They want to improve what women’s football looks like in the North East. That was a really important box ticked for me. And they had already taken steps.“For me, it was a good opportunity not going in to start from scratch. It was adding the structure and strategy behind it.”Yet another goal for Martha Thomas! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/EAI0JcCrA1— Newcastle United Women (@NUFCWomen) November 9, 2026The one-club element is not just for show. Jack Ross spends a day a week at the women’s base, just as he does at the men’s academy. Bunce has direct responsibility for the performance element of the women’s team. And when they were a coach down after Langley’s departure, it was Ross’s idea not to make an external appointment but to approach Peter Ramage, the former defender, who is talent management lead at the club.“Peter didn’t even think about it,” Williams says. “It was, ‘Yes, I love the club, how can I support, how can I help?’. Then there was a bit of, ‘My god, I’ve never worked in women’s football before’, but he was great. It was a brilliant opportunity to bring the club together organically. Peter still comes in to see us once a week. Our coaches go over to the academy building to learn from them. It’s something I’ve never experienced before.”“I talk a lot about alignment, but this is what I mean,” Hopkinson says. “We’re all going in the same direction. You can’t have one club as one of your core values and then have an invisible asterisk alongside it that says ‘Yeah, but not the women. They’re on an island’. One club needs to be inclusive; it needs to be everybody included in our thinking, our priorities and in our strategies. And they are.”On the same theme, Oxtoby got together with Matthias Jaissle, her counterpart with the men’s team, not too long ago, to swap ideas and experiences. “They met, had a coffee and shared some best practice,” Williams says. “They both know the door is open and hopefully that will continue and they’re able to get to each other’s games. Tanya knowing that she has someone else to bounce off or speak to is great. And it’s valuable for the club.”Oxtoby, says Thomas, has forged “a winning culture. There are non-negotiables: do everything to prepare, take it game-by-game, don’t ever get too far ahead of ourselves, don’t ever look too much into the past. She’s very ambitious; she wants energy, she wants to bring out the best in us and create a strong team philosophy. She wants to win.” Sunderland will be a test, but Newcastle have become pretty good at it.Newcastle 2.0 is serving them well but the blueprint of what this team should look like is not unfamiliar. “I want us to be on the ball or fighting for every single ball,” Williams says. “Front-foot, high-pressing, high intensity and we should train how we play. I love it when we win a throw-in and we get cheers from the crowd; I’ve never seen or heard that at other clubs.“I want to see that fight and that grit in all our players and our staff.”This article originally appeared in The Athletic.Newcastle United, Women's Soccer, Women's Super League2026 The Athletic Media Company