Chelsea look to bridge the gap against Arsenal and reboot WSL title push
If Chelsea lose at Arsenal on Sunday, their bid for a third Women’s Super League title will take a heavy hit. Things are tight at the top and defeat would mean Emma Hayes’s third-placed team would slip seven points behind the reigning champions, albeit with a game in hand. “I know the opponent well and I know the manager, I suspect he will throw a few surprises at me,” says Hayes of Joe Montemurro and his team. “So how do you prepare for a surprise? I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll be ready.”
In a 12-team table it is harder to bridge such a gap. The problem for Chelsea is that should they fail to reclaim the crown Arsenal took from them, it will not have been lost in the head-to-head meetings with their title rivals. Instead, they will look back at the four dropped points to Brighton and Liverpool, who have 10 points between them after 12 and 11 games respectively, as the moments when the title slipped from their grasp.
Related: Numbers game: Arsenal hope to see off Chelsea WSL challenge despite smaller squad
Similar problems tripped up their other title rivals, Manchester City, last season. Early draws against Reading and Bristol City proved costly. If they had won those two games, they would have been within one point of Arsenal before facing the Gunners on the last day of the season. Had they not also thrown away a two-goal lead at home to Chelsea to draw 2-2 then they would have been in the driving seat on the final day.
Last weekend, Nick Cushing, having announced his departure for the MLS side New York City FC, said as much. “This team has a feel that we’ve not had over the six seasons. We’ve been so consistent in and around the head-to-heads. OK, we’ve lost away to Chelsea and Arsenal but we’re winning games that we’ve not won before, we’re winning easily in those games.”
Chelsea, though, cannot look backwards too much. They are halfway there, having beaten Arsenal and City at home, with those 2-1 wins coming after conceding first. Such resilience has enabled them to come from behind in seven of their 11 league games and in the past four WSL fixtures. Win every game and they win the league.
Hayes has added firepower with the arrival of Sam Kerr, the record goalscorer in Australia’s W-League and America’s NWSL. The striker is yet to score for Chelsea but the foundations of a formidable partnership with Beth England were evident with the back-heel assist in the Australian’s first game, against Reading, another comeback, a 3-1 win.
Last Sunday, Hayes’s 200th game in charge, they thrashed Bristol City 6-1, again after conceding first.
Like Cushing, Hayes believes there is something special about her group. “I don’t know how you can stop us scoring, I feel that about the team,” she told Chelsea’s website after their midweek defeat of Aston Villa to reach the last four of the Continental League Cup.
“It will be a hard task and I don’t think it’s about shutting one player down in our team. We came out of that game with everybody in a good place.”
Hayes’s squad comprises essentially two starting XIs and against a small and injury-hit side that could be the difference on Sunday. It certainly was in the reverse fixture in October, when Ramona Bachmann and Maria Thorisdottir came off the bench late in the game and combined for the winner.
A tough domestic 2018-19 season that they “knew was over by October” was hit, according to Hayes, by her struggle to get her groove back after being a new mother following the birth of her son, Harry, and Chelsea threw their focus on the Champions League as a result. This time things are different.
“I have an unbelievable dressing room. I am blessed and privileged to coach amazing people that are recruited on the basis of their character, so I never doubt my team,” she said after their October win. “I am not saying I can control results but I can influence their performances and I know that more often than not my team performs for me because of the people they are. So was there an issue with belief? I don’t think there was but we just could never recover last year.
“Now, there’s the learnings of how you can lose a season at the beginning of the year but you don’t necessarily win it either. So I can say that we are not out of the title race, which this time last year we were, that’s the difference.”
