When Manchester City took on St. Polten in their penultimate Champions League group-stage fixture in December, they were without electric winger Lauren Hemp, serial goal-scorer Khadija Shaw and the otherworldly talents of Vivianne Miedema. To break down a defensively stubborn opponent, they needed someone to step up. The player who took up that challenge, however, was the most inexperienced on the pitch. It was 18-year-old Lily Murphy.
Lined up on the left wing, where Hemp would normally terrorise defenders with her explosive pace, Murphy proved a capable replacement, bringing her own terrifying speed to the table while not lacking in confidence when it came to using that to beat her marker. After a bright first half, her big moment came in the 55th minute, when she pounced onto Aoba Fujino’s fantastic cross and broke the deadlock with her first goal for her childhood club.
“You could see the confidence running through her,” City boss Gareth Taylor said after the game, with that belief fuelling the teenager’s star performance. It can be a bit of a cliché to describe young players as fearless but, on her first start for the club, Murphy certainly was, and has been in each of her appearances to date. It’s that freedom that has allowed her to show plenty of promising signs through what has become a real breakthrough season for this talented England youth international.