How Bunny used Bronze and Sterling’s advice to alter City trajectory | OneFootball

It was the advice that potentially altered Club record goalscorer Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw’s City trajectory.

Since the Jamaican’s summer transfer from Bordeaux in 2021, she has cemented her status as one of the game’s most clinical strikers during her spell with Gareth Taylor’s side so far.

This has seen her smash a swathe of records including most goals scored by a City women’s player in a single season (31 in 2022/23), before becoming our all-time leading goalscorer with 72 overall.

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But, on The Women’s Game podcast with Sam Mewis, Bunny has lifted the lid on how guidance from ex-City pair Lucy Bronze and Raheem Sterling put her on the path to history in sky blue, after a difficult early period at the Joie Stadium.

“When I came here initially, I was struggling a bit,” she revealed.

“One day I was coming in from training and Lucy [Bronze] was coming in as well and she asked ‘are you okay?’ and I said ‘I just can’t get the way they play, I can’t get it right’.

WATCH: Bunny Shaw’s goalscoring masterclass

“City play a specific type of way and I was saying when we were walking in from training ‘I cannot get this right’. I didn’t know if here was for me.

“She started laughing and she was like ‘you focus on what got you here, the bits you do well that got you here, there’s something they saw in you that got you here’.

“At that moment I was like ‘wow’. I then called Raheem [Sterling] and I told him the same, I said the same thing to him.

“He was just laughing and said ‘when I came from Liverpool I struggled a bit, they play a certain way so trust the process, believe in what you’re doing and believe in yourself’.”

“I put the comments from both Lucy and Raheem together and it made sense. I told myself to continue working and watching the videos, see how I could improve my game and seeing how best I can help the team.

“By doing that it helped a little better day by day. Couple of weeks later I called Raheem and said ‘it’s working!’

“He was laughing and said ‘I told you, you’ve just got to believe in yourself and do all the right things and focus on you first and foremost before you can focus on anything else’.”

Although her 2023/24 campaign was cut short due to a foot injury, Bunny will finish the campaign with 27 goal involvements in 25 matches which includes 22 goals and five assists.

And she credits her sparkling City success to her dedication on the City Football Academy training pitch.

She added: “I just kept at it and believing in myself. The confidence comes from scoring goals and as the games come, I’m thriving.”

Click here to watch the full The Women’s Game podcast feature Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw.