HOW TO BEAT CHELSEA! By the team who finally did it…

They thought it couldn’t be done…. And having lost every single one of their last eight WSL away games against Chelsea, the odds were stacked against plucky Everton.

So how did they finally end Chelsea’s unbeaten run in the WSL, with a 1-0 win?

We look in detail at the most remarkable, staggering result of the season so far, in the words of Everton players Ruby Mace and Courtney Brosnan, plus their head coach Brian Sorensen.

They all spoke to Helen M Jerome after the match about what went down on a rainy, windy afternoon at Kingsmeadow – as did a brutally honest Sonia Bompastor…

RUBY MACE

Everton’s record signing Ruby Mace is beaming from ear to ear as she leaves the travelling Everton fans and strides across the Kingsmeadow pitch to talk through the game. And she has one word to sum up how she’s feeling: happy!

Mace (below, left) has come off the back of hugely impressive performances for the Young Lionesses in the international break, where she captained the team and very much led by example in her attitude and drive. Today continued that form.

She must be delighted? “Yeah. I think this game just topped it off, to be honest. I want to be the best version of myself and just be Ruby Mace and not try and be anyone else.”  

Mace says their instructions from Everton’s head coach Brian Sorensen were simple. The game plan “was to just work together. That was the biggest message. We have to be together in order to come out on top. And that’s what we did today.”

That can’t have been easy with the intensity and physicality of the game, which meant they couldn’t turn off for even a second. Typically self-deprecating, Mace says: “No, no! I think I blinked a bit too slow one time and they were in! Yeah, you have to make sure that you’re switched on the whole time.”

Their attitude was exemplary, especially with so many players out of position to compensate for injuries. Mace sums up her current partnership with fellow centre back, Martina Fernandez as: “we always say: celebrate the little things. So if we make a small challenge, then make it into a big thing to keep everyone going.”

Everton’s discipline was rigid and all the stats on clearances and blocks tell part of the story. Except for one mad moment where Mace suddenly rushed forward into the midfield! “Yeah,” she laughs: “I just saw the ball, and I had to just press down the line a bit, and I got screamed at after that. It wasn’t a good decision.”

Remarkably, centre back is not Mace’s first or even second choice position, but she seems to have taken to it like a duck to water. As to what her favourite position, she says: “I’m not too sure at the moment. I’m liking it, as centre back. And yeah, I like the midfield role one. Wherever I’m able to make an impact, I’m happy to play there.”

With obvious delight at the result, Mace agrees that Everton are starting to flourish. “Yeah, for sure. Everton’s a team that you shouldn’t sleep on and we’re here to prove a point!” The team’s ambition, she says, is “to finish as high up the table as we can. We were competing against the champions, and we managed to win today, and we’ll take that forward into the next game.”

Maybe everyone else in the WSL needs to take notice, as it looks like Everton have a different game plan for every single team they encounter. “Partly,” says Mace. “It depends what team you’re playing on the day and what team they have. We just have to be prepared ourselves in order to beat the team we’re coming up against.”

COURTNEY BROSNAN

Everton goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan (above, centre) was deservedly player of the match, and could not hide her delight. Her one word to sum up Everton’s performance? Proud; proud of the team.

As for the secret of their success, she expands on their game plan, and crucially, their attitude. “Yeah, we knew it was going to be a tough battle and I think it really starts with that. We knew that we need to show up with intensity and work rate and things like that.”

Seasons of coming up against the formidable teams of Emma Hayes and now Sonia Bompastor have prepped Brosnan – who also has a stellar career with Ireland – to expect an onslaught.

“You’re never going to get a result against Chelsea or a top team if you’re not going to show up and put your body on the line and do everything you need.”

“So obviously we had a game plan,” she says, “but I think the basics are really important for us – with that energy and intensity and that passion for the badge.”

Four Japanese players started the match for Everton – Rion Ishikawa, Hikaru Kitagawa, Yuka Momiki and goalscorer Honoka Hayashi – and they all put in a shift. Brosnan agrees: “Yeah, a hundred percent. I think we knew the quality of the girls that we signed this summer, and obviously it was great to add some more quality to our team.”

“Everyone put in a big shift today and I was very happy and proud of Hono (above, right) to obviously score the goal. She works extremely hard. And it’s amazing to get her name on the score sheet, I’m very happy for her.”

When picking out her favourite save of the afternoon from the numerous ones she made, she is quick to select one: “Yeah, I think the one on the line in the second half off the deflection is probably the favourite.”

It also helped that she seemed to have a force field stopping the relentless Chelsea attack from scoring, especially when they thought they’d equalised in the dying moments. Brosnan says she blanked it out. “I just wanted to take the win and go!”

BRIAN SORENSEN

Everton head coach Brian Sorensen must have surely felt his heart rate rising during the match? “It was high at times, but that’s more from the situations I feel that the ref maybe gave them that’s just annoying and irritating.”

“But overall I’m a pretty calm guy,” adds Sorensen, “and, at the end of the day, I can’t do so much about it any anyway. I can try to guide and help from the sideline, so of course you can hear my voice. I was yelling a bit more today at times. But actually what I do there, it’s not like I’m frustrated or my heart rate is high. I’m pretty, pretty calm.”

I wondered if Chelsea perhaps played into Everton’s hands by endlessly crossing the ball and being greeted by endless clearances? There was maybe no plan B?

“No,” he agrees. “That’s also what our plan was, to limit it, especially on the left. So their left side, just give them that a bit more. And Baltimore could swing these crosses in as much as she wanted to. We know we can deal with that with Courtney and the two centre backs.”

Sorensen (above, in calm and excitable manner) also praises his Japanese players, singling out one defender in particular. “Hikaru Kitagawa is very important. The full back coming in, closing and winning these headers. So yeah, that’s why we showed it that side and also we neutralised Carpenter’s getting around because she makes entries into the box where Baltimore maybe crosses a bit more. So yeah, that was also part of it.”

Was there anything that surprised him about the way Chelsea played? “It surprised me – the line-up – that they were playing so offensive, like basically without a midfield.”

“But again, it feels like this season, every time we have a plan, it’s the opposite that they do. From our defending mindset, it was still the same job. It was just the players they played in those positions are more attacking minded. So I felt that maybe they made it a little harder, but we saw them…”

So maybe Everton are better than Barcelona then? “Yeah,” laughs Sorensen, “probably, if you can say that!”

SONIA BOMPASTOR

As candid as ever, Chelsea head coach, Sonia Bompastor says she isn’t bothered about their unbeaten run ending. “It was not one of our goals in going into this new season. For us, our mindset was we started the new season from zero. We didn’t win anything yet. We want to be able to compete in every competition. We want to win trophies. That’s our mindset.”

“Going into every game,” says Bompastor, “we know it’ll be tough. This league is competitive. On the game tonight, we knew we had to be really switched on and focus on the transition. They scored from one of these moments early on the game and it just changed… After that we were running after the result.”

On the plus side, she knows the performance and stats tell one story. But crucially, says Bompastor, for now what they need to solve is how can they get back to scoring goals?

“If you want to win games, to make sure you win, you score goals. If you look at our statistics, we are creating enough to win the games, but we are just not being efficient and clinical enough.

Of course, Chelsea are also missing some big, important players – though they were able to bring Sam Kerr, Johanna Ryytting Kaneryd, Sjoeke Nusken and Wieke Kaptein off the bench, and were able to start Lauren James after her injuries since the Euros.

“I think the players available right now are good enough to be able to win the games. So I trust them. I just think sometimes – even if it’s tough for me to say – we need to have more composure in some moments of the game.”

There’s a wry, final smile when I ask Bompastor about another outstanding performance from an opposition goalkeeper, this time Courtney Brosnan. “Yeah. She had a great game. I agree with you. If you look at our games since the beginning of the season, it’s often the case that the goalkeeper is shining.”

“That’s probably because they improved, they are better, but also because maybe we are not clinical enough. I think we had some really big chances where we could have put the ball in. And sometimes we also help the goalkeeper!”