Johnson on Women’s Under-19s season opener: ‘We want to go out there and prove ourselves’
Ellie Johnson says the momentum of facing senior opposition in pre-season needs to be taken into our Professional Game Academy League opener on Wednesday against Southampton.
Our Women’s Under-19s kick off their 2026/27 campaign away at Southampton as part of the first phase of the PGA League, with the aim of finishing in the top four to secure our spot in Division One for the remainder of the season.
Returning to pre-season at the beginning of the July under new Head Coach Matt Sharman, our youngsters have been preparing with fixtures against a number of senior sides, including Peterborough United and Stevenage in recent weeks.
It’s a brand-new look to our Under-19 for the upcoming term, welcoming nine new players from the Under-16s last term and also new additions to our PGA Programme, which includes the return of Ellie from London City Lionesses.
Originally part of our Academy programme, where she was part of our U16s PGA Trophy winning side in 2025, the midfielder has made an immediate impact in her first few weeks back in Lilywhite shirt, scoring twice in behind-closed-doors friendlies.
Reflecting on a tough pre-season schedule against experienced, senior sides, Ellie feels they have provided an eye-opener on what the squad needs to make that next step ahead of our league opener.
“It’s been really good,” she told us, reviewing pre-season as a whole. “We have kind of showed that we're here to do something and the first four games, I think we've done pretty well, considering we played against women's senior opposition, where they showed more of a physical battle.
“But that's given us a test going into the first game on Wednesday and throughout pre-season, everyone's trained really hard.”
When asked about the biggest learnings from those games, she explained: “The most obvious is the physical. They are much more physical because they're older and they’ve much more experience as well. So, the more knowledge you've got on the game, the more physical and more experience you’ve as a player.”
Now, the attention turns to our opening game of the PGA League season with a trip to Southampton this Wednesday and Ellie is looking forward to finally getting started in competitive action.
“I'm very looking forward to it,” Ellie added. “I have played Southampton a couple of times and they're a good side, but I think we can really go out there and prove something.
“We just want to go out there and prove to other teams, to ourselves, that we can go and compete with some of the best academies and be in Division One. We just need to play how we've been playing previously and we've been doing really well, training hard, so I think we just need to keep that up.”