Any team without Vivianne Miedema, Khadija Shaw, Lauren Hemp and Alex Greenwood would drop their level.

City’s extensive injury list, which includes those key players, has severely impacted their campaign and thrust their lack of squad depth into question.

Jill Roord, Aoba Fujino, Rebecca Knaak, Laura Coombs, Naomi Layzell and keeper Ayaka Yamashita have also missed a significant number of games this season as City currently sit fourth in the WSL, seven points adrift of Manchester United in the final Champions League spot with just four games left.

They had only four outfield players on the bench in the second leg of their Women’s Champions League quarter-final defeat by Chelsea, where the Blues overturned a 2-0 first-leg deficit, and have ended the season with academy graduates Gracie Prior and Lily Murphy starting almost every game.

Interim manager Nick Cushing admitted the injury crisis “100% needs to be examined” in the summer – but it will not help his side now.

“With so many injuries, they can’t be all bad luck and they can’t all be down to bad practise,” he said.

“We have to look at everything. We have to look at why we’re sitting fourth in the league, why we’ve not won a trophy and why we’ve not got our best players [through injury].

“The review process will be covering everything. I think we should be competing in every competition right until the end.”