Key Highlights
- For a Chelsea team so used to winning the Women’s Super League, this is uncharted territory after their 5-1 loss to Manchester City. For Sonia Bompastor, who has had more defeats in her past five league matches than in her previous 104 games in charge of Chelsea and Lyon, this is also an unfamiliar scenario, but Chelsea have placed their full faith in her – and vice versa – by agreeing a new, extended contract with the Frenchwoman and putting their trust in each other that recent results amount merely to a temporary blip, rather than a longer-term downward spiral. The tone of the past few days’ reaction to the City defeat is a compliment to her track record – not least, winning a treble last term while remaining unbeaten domestically – and to the relentless domestic success Chelsea have enjoyed over the past decade that so much is being made of what essentially amounts to a very bad eight days.
- Chelsea have lost back-to-back WSL games for the first time since July 2015 but those defeats came against two of Europe’s best, Arsenal and Manchester City, so while the performances have fallen well below the standards expected, they have not suddenly become mediocre. Sonia Bompastor agrees Chelsea contract extension with club off WSL title paceRead moreChelsea are in the League Cup final, the Champions League quarter-finals – having finished the highest of the English sides in the league phase – and the Women’s FA Cup fifth round.
- Underestimate them at your peril, and the club will now be hoping that a new deal for Bompastor will provide stability to help them end the season with more silverware. The signs had looked ominous though, when Bompastor took something of a dangerous strategy in the media by implying her dissatisfaction at Chelsea’s “squad depth” after the City game.
- It not only risked alienating her superiors but, perhaps more importantly, could offend the players on the bench for the humbling loss at the Etihad Stadium.
- It also risked the ridicule of WSL coaches on smaller budgets who will have noted that a Fifa report last week showed Chelsea spent the most on international transfer fees of any women’s club in 2025. This week, several sources close to the squad have said that many of the players are no longer playing for the manager, an argument that becomes believable when you look at the body language of some during the second half at City, and some players are understood to feel they receive far less detailed tactical instructions in Bompastor’s team talks than during Emma Hayes’s tenure.
