Founded 1991 Number of teams 72 Most successful club(s) Arsenal
(10 times) | Region England Current champions Tottenham Hotspur | |
The Football Association Women's Premier League Cup is a cup competition in English Women's association football. It is also referred to as the Women's League Cup as it is the women's equivalent to the men's League Cup, although both competitions are organised by different governing bodies.
Contents
The competition is open to the 72 teams in the FA Women's Premier League (Northern and Southern divisions, plus the four Division 1). Unlike the men's League Cup, the women's semi-finals are not done over two legs, as the semi-finals and final venues are usually rented from a men's League team and are thus larger than a usual women's League match venue.
Up to the creation of the FA WSL it was England's top league cup. Since then the country's top teams enter the WSL League Cup only.
Format
The format changed over the years. It either was played as a straight knock-out and since 2011 with preceding group stage.
After the league restructuring of the Women's Premier League in 2015 up to 72 teams are eligible to participate. At first all teams are drawn against each other in the determining round. The winning teams then are drawn into either a prelininary round or directly into the first round of the cup. Thus 32 teams then play the first round.
The losers of the determining round play a preliminary round and then a round of 32 onwards for the Premier League Plate, first played out in 2015–16.
List of finals
The finals were: