Chelsea fail to convince but still lack title challengers

Bompastor was particularly animated, screaming the names of her players into the howling maelstrom. She cited the noise from the fans afterwards as making it harder to get her instructions across but that seemed a convenient excuse for the obvious frustration.

Chelsea have not started the season well. Glance at the table and that appears a ridiculous statement. Prior to this weekend, they were the only team with a 100% record after four games. But their performances have told a different story.

Their invincible season last year was completed with the meanest defence in the league. They are now conceding about 30% more shots, expected goals and passes into the final third. Aston Villa and Leicester City have shown that if you push at the door, it will swing open, although neither were able to walk through it and pick up points.

“If you are brave with the ball, you can open these teams up,” said Marc Skinner, the Manchester United manager. “For a majority of their games, they are ball oriented so they don’t defend with the same structure. We’ve been guilty in the past of not being as aggressive as you need to be. We were excellent with that. We twisted, we turned, we took on one v ones. If you do that, you’re unpredictable and that breaks structures.”

Bompastor is outwardly nonplussed about the defensive laxness. “We want to take more risks in our game,” she said before the draw with United. “We want to be a team who dominates the opposition. We also want to have a team that takes risks on the pitch. It’s always important to find the right balance between in-possession and out of possession. But I’m someone who likes to take risks and we want to be offensive.”

The risk-taking has prompted more fear than fortune this season. Captain Millie Bright has looked like a weary predator in defence, only able to look on as her prey gallops away, bearing down on goal. Too often have Chelsea’s full-back/wing-back hybrids been left uncertain of who they are tracking or where they are supposed to be. Bompastor’s constantly changing starting XI suggests she also knows it is not quite right. Yet even then, they do not lose.

The mute acceptance of Bompastor’s continued perfect domestic record epitomises the strange standards Chelsea are held to. Winning the league six seasons in a row generates both ennui and expectation. It is patently not exciting to watch the same team win every year. Even the slightest incursions on their superiority are greeted with delight as was the case this weekend when they dropped points for the first time this season.

Sometimes that slips into delusion. United held their own for portions of the match and could have won, but it was Chelsea’s profligacy in front of goal that meant they went home with only a point.

Their expected goals of 2.9 was the most Manchester United had conceded since the end of the 2023-24 season, where they lost 5-0 to Chelsea on the final day. United are entitled to feel pleased to get a point from a team whom they have never beaten in the league but it does beg the question as to how long they can see themselves as just plucky underdogs.

The assumption that Chelsea should brush teams aside then tends to cast their performances in its own dour light. The reality is that consistency in football is not necessarily sexy. No team succeed through a whole season playing gorgeously. Winning – or not losing – when you are not very good is a skill in itself. At some point if the narrative is that Chelsea always play badly but always win, the question has to be how? Teams do not fluke runs like this. The irony of the draw with Manchester United was that it was arguably the best performance of Chelsea’s season. That’s the football gods for you.

The WSL title race has long become about who can usurp Chelsea rather than a four-horse race from a standing start. They are the pacesetters. We watch to see how many times the other teams trip up whether by dropping points against mid-table sides or an onrushing injury crisis.

Arsenal as Champions League winners were deservedly seen as Chelsea’s most likely challengers. But in five games of the new season, they have dropped seven points, having lost 3-2 to Manchester City yesterday despite equalising for a second time in the 83rd minute. Chelsea dropped six points in the whole of last season.

Arsenal fought fiercely to take something from the match. Chloe Kelly’s 18-yard strike made it 2-2 and she celebrated with all the badge tapping that you would expect from someone who had been frozen out at City 10 months before.

But it was not enough as Iman Beney scored an 88th-minute winner and may well have ruined Arsenal’s title hopes within a month of the season beginning. For that to happen two years in a row is a significant disappointment for a team who remain the most popular women’s side in the country. For Manchester City, however, the result is an early justification of new manager Andrée Jeglertz’s methods. Without any Champions League football this season, they may be the side now best placed to challenge Chelsea.

Photograph by Martin Rickett/PA Wire