On the sidelines with five minutes to go at Stamford Bridge, Sonia Bompastor hopped up and down. Wearing her familiar hoodie and blazer combination, she was on the cusp of becoming the first manager to win her first seven Women’s Super League matches. But, despite Chelsea’s 2-0 lead over Manchester City, she thought there was plenty to still remonstrate about.
“Sometimes I get frustrated when it’s a simple situation and we give the ball away,” Bompastor said in the press conference after the statement victory, when asked about her personality on the touchline.
“But when we scored, I was really enjoying it because scoring two goals against Man City… that’s a really great performance.”
You wouldn’t know in those frustrated touchline moments that Bompastor had just completed a useful treble; winning the three WSL fixtures Chelsea had lost last season, her team scoring seven times in those matches and conceding only once. The team who won a fifth consecutive WSL title last season are now top of the league and nine points up on a game-by-game basis compared to last season.
Saturday’s win was thanks to goals from Mayra Ramirez and Guro Reiten, who scored in the 75th and 79th minute. Ramirez’s moment saw her brush off City centre-back Alanna Kennedy to bear down terrifyingly on the City goal, before Reiten scored unmarked from a corner with a curling finish. Though the goals were not necessarily part of an obvious Bompastor blueprint, the position Chelsea found themselves in with 15 minutes to go was.
In Bompastor’s first matches, Chelsea would begin games strongly with an intense press before losing their way as energy levels faded. The control in possession that the new manager had promised before the season looked far away at these points. Fast forward to this match — an opportunity to host title rivals Manchester City at Stamford Bridge for the first time — and Chelsea had control, even if they did not have the possession (37 per cent to their opponents’ 63 per cent).
That was really what mattered. City did not have a shot on target in the first half, and only one shot at all from inside the box. It was a reflection of how well Chelsea had managed to keep City at arm’s length. In the past, Chelsea’s approach to possession-heavy teams seemed to be to soak up as much as pressure possible and not worry about what they did when they had the ball. This was a different story.
Maika Hamano was crucial to Chelsea’s tactics. Hamano had signed for the club in January 2023 but was loaned to Hammarby in Sweden before joining the squad 11 months ago and, in her 10th Chelsea start, was tasked with marking her Japan compatriot Yui Hasegawa.
Hamano, 20, has been given her chance in the team thanks to injuries. Lauren James has been absent for weeks with a calf injury, while Catarina Macario has struggled to reach full fitness since returning from an anterior cruciate ligament injury. But Hamano is not Chelsea’s only option for the No 10 role.
“I don’t care about age,” said Bompastor about Hamano’s performance. “Maika did well tonight but she has also done well in the last performances for the team.
“She still has a lot of room for improvement, but she understands what we expect from her on the pitch, out of possession but also with the ball.”
Her work off the ball was crucial, although her assist for Ramirez’s goal with the outside of her boot was not to be sniffed at either.
Hasegawa makes things tick for City, particularly when injured centre-back Laia Aleixandri is missing. When City are at their fluid best, she can register more than 100 touches on the ball. Blocked off and harried by Hamano, Hasegawa managed just 60 touches on Saturday. Only against Barcelona has she made fewer touches this season.
Hamano’s dominance was just one element of a broader Chelsea game plan that saw full-backs Lucy Bronze and Sandy Baltimore nullify City’s wingers, while Erin Cuthbert also hoovered up loose balls in midfield.
Normally, City’s midfielders recycle possession and make dangerous late arrivals into the box — but against Chelsea, only one shot was taken by a player not called Khadija Shaw. That was from Aoba Fujino in the 67th minute, a reflection of the visitors’ lack of variety in attack. In contrast, Chelsea had nine players take shots.
This match had long been circled in the calendar as an opportunity to assess Bompastor’s Chelsea. Matches against weaker opposition or teams in turmoil, as was the case when they won against Arsenal at the Emirates, were not seen as genuine tests. But City have looked like title favourites, not least because of their impressive win in the Champions League group stage against Chelsea’s old rivals Barcelona.
The victory over City sends Chelsea top of the WSL and is a definitive marker of Bompastor and Chelsea’s intentions. If they can win their game in hand against Manchester United next weekend, they will go five points clear of City in second. On this form, that is a formidable advantage.
(Top picture: Alex Broadway/Getty Images)
