• Bronze, Christiansen, Kirby, Nobbs and Taylor are on shortlist • WSL 1 attendances have dropped by 11% but TV viewing is up

Five members of Phil Neville’s England squad are in contention to win the Football Writers’ Association’s inaugural Women’s Footballer of the Year award.

Lyon’s Lucy Bronze, Manchester City’s Isobel Christiansen, Chelsea’s Fran Kirby, Arsenal’s Jordan Nobbs and Seattle Reign’s much-travelled Jodie Taylor comprise the shortlist selected by a 22-person judging panel. The winner will be decided before the Footballer of the Year dinner in London on 10 May.

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Will it be yet another award for Taylor? The striker not only won the Golden Boot as top scorer in the 2017 European Championship in which England, managed by Mark Sampson, reached the semi-finals but scored the winning goal for Melbourne City during the W-League Grand final this winter.

While Taylor has played for Arsenal, Melbourne and now Seattle in the past 12 months, Bronze has swapped Manchester City for Lyon. Voted as part of the Team of Euro 2017 in the Netherlands, she is widely regarded as the world’s best right-back.

Bronze’s former City team Christiansen is a fast-improving midfielder whose maturation has coincided with City’s domestic rise.

Few players are more catalytic than Kirby. A gifted forward capable of “playing between the lines”, she was dubbed our “mini Messi” by Sampson and is the Women’s Super League’s leading scorer with 15 goals in 20 appearances for Chelsea. Kirby has established herself as an international star after overcoming severe teenage depression which struck following her mother’s death.

No one should underestimate Nobbs’s chances of becoming the first recipient of this most timely FWA award. A dynamic, technically assured midfielder with a penchant for spectacular goals, she promises to be integral to Neville’s hopes of winning the 2019 World Cup in France and has proved central to Arsenal’s recent renaissance.

The announcement of the shortlist coincided with the Football Association revealing that WSL 1 attendances have dropped by 11% this season.

Midway through the first campaign following the switch from a summer to a winter game they are down to an average of 953 per game, with the disappointment only slightly leavened by a 7% growth in crowds at WSL 2 matches, where the median attendance is 365.

Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’s head of women’s football, hopes that a restructuring of the league’s top two tiers next season, featuring a fully professional first division, will boost spectator figures.

Elsewhere participation is growing steadily and there are 6,767 affiliated female football teams across the country, up from 6,000 in 2016-17.

This increase in the numbers playing football is mirrored by those watching it on television. Peak viewing figures for live WSL matches has increased from 46,000 to 103,000 on BT Sport and 130,000 on the BBC red button service. Meanwhile a UK record TV audience of 3.9m for women’s football tuned in for the Euro 2017 semi-final between Holland and England on Channel 4.

One year into her four-year “gameplan for growth”, Campbell is cautiously optimistic about the future. “We are striving to ensure that all girls and women are welcomed and valued as players, coaches, referees and administrators,” Campbell said.

“We have made a good start in every area but we are only in the foothills – there is still a mountain to climb. We have the desire and aspiration to drive this game to new heights but it will take creativity, courage and a constant willingness to challenge the status quo.”

Neville is delighted by his team’s rise to second in the world rankings. “My objective is to make us the best in the world,” said Neville, who will take charge of his first World Cup qualifier, against Wales, at Southampton on Friday week. “I’m absolutely certain we’ll get to No 1 in the world. Even in the five to six weeks I’ve been in the job I think the expectation levels have risen and the popularity has risen, too.”