"I think I've only played up front three games, and scored three goals. Not a bad ratio, is it?" Rachel Daly says it with a smile. But the stat lands like an indictment of how she's been used.
The Aston Villa forward has spent the better part of a decade collecting trophies, Golden Boots, and debut goals — while consistently being asked to do something other than the thing she does best. Left-back at Euro 2022. Left wing-back at the World Cup. Deeper midfield under Natalia Arroyo this season. The woman who scored 22 goals in 22 WSL appearances in 2022-23, matching the league's all-time scoring record and becoming the first English player to win the Golden Boot since Ellen White in 2018, has managed three goals in 14 matches this campaign.
The versatility trap
Daly's career reads like a coaching staff's dream and a striker's nightmare. She's played every outfield position at professional level — forward, winger, second striker, wide midfielder, deep-lying midfielder, left wing-back, left-back, left-sided centre-back. During her freshman year at St. John's University in New York, her coach even stuck her in goal during training. She responded by scoring a hat-trick on her competitive debut the following season, in a 5-0 win over Fordham.
The pattern never really stopped. She became Houston Dash's all-time leading scorer with 42 NWSL goals, won the 2020 Challenge Cup Golden Boot and MVP — then spent the entire summer of 2022 playing left-back as England won Euro 2022. The next summer, she scored twice against Italy in the Arnold Clark Cup as a centre-forward, only to revert to left-back and left wing-back for the World Cup, including the final against Spain. When England needed a spark in that final, trailing 1-0 at half-time, Wiegman took Daly off. Her international career ended the following spring.
"I always used to say, because of my athleticism, that's why I was good at left-back," Daly recalls, quoting Wiegman back. She's not bitter about it. But she's also very clear about the cost — tracking back to defend, constantly toggling between club striker and international defender, club to country and back again. "Don't get me wrong. There's been games where I've had my pants pulled down, Spain being one of them."
What she actually is
Watch the goals and a picture emerges of a striker who is more complete than the heading-machine reputation suggests. There's the swivelling left-foot volley against West Ham in November 2023. The deft debut finish against City in September 2022 — Villa's first-ever WSL goal against them — where she stayed onside by curving back on her run, then stabbed home from Ellie Roebuck's spill. The Golden Boot-sealing scramble against Arsenal on the final day of 2022-23, as the away end chanted unprintable things about her award and she scored anyway.
"That's typical me," she says of that Arsenal goal. "In the huddle, everyone was singing, 'You can shove your Golden Boot up your a--'. I remember Ruesha Littlejohn shouting it at me."
She does head the ball well — she'll admit as much and so will WyScout, which rates her best action as a header against Brighton in January 2026. But Daly is sharper on the technical side than she gets credit for. She worked for two summers with individual trainer Dave Copeland Smith in California, drilling finishes from the right wing, left-foot work, separation touches. "It was repetition of things I wasn't good at," she says. "He knocked that out of me."
Now 34, with a year left on her Villa contract, Daly is watching Kirsty Hanson play the role that brought her to the club — Hanson has 11 goals this season. Daly has three, and hasn't featured at centre-forward regularly under Arroyo. The open-play touches in the 18-yard box have dropped off a cliff.
She underwent a medical procedure after the Brighton match in January and didn't return until May. That's context. But the positioning question will follow her into next season regardless.
"I'm only done when I'm done," she says. And when she plays up front, the numbers suggest she's far from done. Three appearances as a striker this season. Three goals.
