Out they stream from Fulham Broadway station into the weak January sun. Throngs of people packed round the entrances to Stamford Bridge. On the tube, a father stands with his two daughters, one in an Arsenal shirt, the other in a Chelsea one. It is a day for split loyalties. For some that split goes all the way to the soul – two people wearing half-and-half shirts are walking into the ground. London is blue/red. Delete as appropriate, or not.
Chelsea vs Arsenal is without fail Chelsea’s best attended fixture of the season with 30,545 watching on. It is the date that fans look for when the fixtures are released and a game that finds a way to fuel narrative and discourse whatever the position of the two teams participating in it. Opinions of managers and analyses of seasons swing far more on the results of this fixture than any sensible-minded person would suggest it should.
Its popularity extends into celebrityville too. Thierry Henry was sitting in the stands. Next to him was Jason Sudeikis, the Ted Lasso star, who also watched these clubs’ men’s sides in the Carabao Cup earlier this month. The Reddit co-founder and Chelsea minority owner Alexis Ohanian was also present.
Women’s football has been speed run in this country over the past couple of years. Professionalisation (of two leagues), crowds jumping from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands, seven-figure transfer fees. It comes with handwringing. “Where is the revenue?” cry the football finance nerds as they pore over the accounts on Companies House.
Yet this fixture is proof that the best things take their time. The rivalry between Chelsea and Arsenal has been marinating for years. The historic club of women’s football vs the upstarts who sought to be queens. Chelsea might have spent their way to complete domestic dominance over the past couple of seasons but Arsenal proved there was life in the old dog yet when they won last season’s Champions League. That is a feat that continues to elude Chelsea, which Arsenal fans made sure to remind them of throughout the game.
This is a match that always matters in its own right, regardless of the impact on the table.
This is a match that always matters in its own right, regardless of the impact on the table.
It is the returning cast of characters that makes it so compelling. Katie McCabe, sent off for dissent in last year’s game, plays a perfect villain for Chelsea fans. Sam Kerr fulfils the same role for Arsenal supporters, having tormented them with equalisers and winners over the years, and even pointed out how many WSL titles she had won when Chelsea lost to Arsenal in 2022-23. Kerr had not started a WSL game this season and cut a frustrated figure. As she walked off, substituted after Arsenal took the lead on 55 minutes, she swore. She is used to finding a way of making her mark on these games.
Chelsea needed to concede to wake up. When Beth Mead rifled in the opener, the match went from cagey to a ferocious pace, something that played into Arsenal’s hands. Renée Slegers’ side have struggled against low blocks, which Manchester United had exploited to their delight in midweek as they beat them to reach the League Cup final. As space opened up, a disorganised Chelsea left Mariona Caldentey unmarked with all the time in the world to curl in Arsenal’s second within five minutes of the opener.
Despite a host of substitutions, Chelsea were unable to get back into the match. It was the first away win for Arsenal at Chelsea since 2018, and the first time Chelsea had lost in the league at Stamford Bridge since they started playing selected matches there in the 2019-20 season. It was also Arsenal manager Slegers’ first win against Chelsea, which she made clear after the match was something that mattered to her.
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“This is my third game against Chelsea and I made a commitment to myself about how I want to go into these kinds of games,” she said. Rivalries rub off on managers over time, too.
For all the Arsenal fans’ understandable delight, the true winners from this result are Manchester City, who have one hand on the title now. A win against London City Lionesses today would send them nine points clear at the top, and on course to end Chelsea’s ironclad grip on the league.
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Their head coach Sonia Bompastor cut a strangely sanguine figure after the match, admitting that the title looked like it would be a long way off. With only seven points from their past five WSL matches, Chelsea’s attempt to keep up at the top has been fairly enfeebled. When asked about their poor run, Bompastor paused. “I don’t really know what to say,” she replied.
This is a match that always matters in its own right, though, regardless of the impact on the table. It is also a cycle that will restart the next time the two teams play each other. It looks likely that will be the Champions League quarter-finals, providing Arsenal find a way past OH Leuven.
For now, McCabe put it best as she spoke to BBC Sport after the match.
“These games, it’s bragging rights.”
Photograph by Alex Broadway – WSL/WSL Football via Getty Images