TITLE BLUES – if the WSL title race is already down to two, what’s the difference?

Can it already be time to put aside the hype and the hope of WSL title wannabes and focus on the emerging big two – the Blues of West London and the slightly lighter Blues of Manchester?

Gethin Thurlow looks at the surges of Chelsea and Man City, and also sees the (goal) difference between them – understandably giving him flashbacks…

We find ourselves in early November and despite the crazy transfers of London City, the hype that built around Arsenal in the summer and everyone’s favourite wildcard pick Spurs all being touted for the title pre-season, the WSL table has an air of familiarity and inevitability about it. Chelsea and Manchester City sit at the top, six points clear of the rest after eight games. While chaos ensures around the league, all they do is keep winning (and very occasionally drawing).

Yes there is a long way to go, and this season as much as ever it seems that anyone can take points off anyone, but a two-way title race between Chelsea and City feels like it’s the only way this is going. This a battle we’ve seen before, and they don’t come more exciting than the 2023-24 season.

2024 Flashback

After 22 games it was not points, but goal difference that separated the teams at the close of 2023-24. Gareth Taylor’s free-scoring City side, relatively unaffected by injury and without the Champions League to manage, bossed the league and held the goal difference advantage for most of the season.

Emma Hayes’ scrappy Chelsea kept doing what they did best – getting wins out of games they didn’t play that well in and struggled to score at the same rate. However, one fateful Wednesday night turned everything on its head. A win over the practically already-relegated Bristol was a given for Chelsea, but the 8-0 margin which flipped the table was not.

This year it’s almost the other way around. After a dominant first WSL campaign under Andrée Jeglertz last season, Man City have struggled much more this time around, still getting those crucial wins, but not necessarily with the performances and subsequently the winning margins to match.

Having conceded six more goals and scored five fewer goals than Chelsea, it is at both ends of the pitch that the reigning champions lack the utter ruthlessness of Sonia Bompastor’s team. The return of Rebecca Knaak is a boost to City’s defence, and Vivianne Miedema will add dimensions to the attack. But will this be enough to sustain a title challenge, and in particular overcome the goal difference gap that the west London club have already accrued? It’s going to be a big test of this new era of Manchester City under Jeglertz.

It’s Complicated

One aspect that the teams aren’t experiencing equally is the impact of European football. Chelsea have had to manage their squad in the Champions League every year under Bompastor, and it didn’t stop them winning the domestic treble in her first year.

Man City meanwhile, have been destroyed by this in the past. Gareth Taylor’s success was always dependent on an very small playing squad that almost never rotated, and once midweek games started popping up that fell apart.

Injuries and the Asian Cup did force City’s Swedish manager into some squad rotation last year, but by the end of the season he had a pretty set line-up that he rarely tinkered with. This year however has been nothing like that. Midweek games have stacked up already, and starting the season without Knaak or Miedema only made things harder.

Last year’s resident left back Alex Greenwood has switched from playing centre back to left back various times, including sometimes within games. Niamh Charles, Carlotta Wamser and Kerstin Casparij have each spent time at both right and left back, with Iman Beney also utilised at right back sometimes.

Grace Clinton and Aoba Fujino have swapped in and out in attacking midfield, with the Japanese workhorse also managing the role of right wing alongside Mary Fowler. City’s balance hasn’t quite been found yet, and performances do drop when too many changes occur between games, but as they get more used to it, and as Jeglertz gets a clearer picture, that should become easier.

Part of Chelsea’s strength comes in their squad size, and the fact their goals are being shared around so much. One week Lauren James will win a game with two worldies, and the next Melvine Malard will pop up with a brace. Sandy Baltimore spent a lot of time early in the season on the bench – to some criticism – and now as she’s more involved in the team she looks fresh, able to dance past defenders for fun and work wonders with that wand of a left foot.

At the moment, it feels like Bompastor could name an entirely different team two games in a row and both would be easy 3-0 wins (even if it would be severely annoying for Fantasy WSL players).

This season is certain lining up to be a scintillating battle, and we spoke to both head coaches about it after their last games.

SONIA BOMPASTOR:

You won 6-0, and crucially conceded no goals [at Charlton]. And that has put your goal difference ahead of City by a massive margin. Can you tell me the importance of keeping that goal difference so high?

Every detail is important in this league, so when you have the opportunity to come into a game and you create a lot, you need to make sure you are clinical and ruthless. 

Not only for this game, not only for making sure we win the league, it’s also because that’s our mentality, that’s who I am also as a manager. 

So, yes, I think it’s important when you want to be dominant, be able to score early in the game and keep scoring goals until the end.

You also need to respect the fans, they are coming, they want to see goals, they want to enjoy the game. So, yes, that’s part of the DNA we want to have in terms of team.

Would you say this is a big step towards pushing for the title?

No, I think we are too soon in the season to say. We have big games coming, we haven’t played the London City Lionesses, we haven’t played Everton yet, we haven’t played Man City. 

So, many games coming, we have still Brighton to play. So, it’s too early in the season, but we are ambitious and the best thing we can do to control the ambitions we have is to make sure that now we are top of the table only on goal difference and we need to maintain that as long as possible.

I think coming into the next games, if we can get as many three points as possible, it’s the best we could do. So, yes, we need to focus on that and also to focus a lot on the performances we want to get from every game.

ANDRÉE JEGLERTZ:

Can I ask you about goal difference? Because at the moment, at the top of the league, you and Chelsea are moving away, but their goal difference is huge.

Yep.

And when you played Charlton away, you won 1-0, and they put six past them. So I wonder if you think at the end of the season, these kind of things might be crucial.

Of course. Goal difference is, of course, important.

But for me, the points are the key thing.

And in some games, especially when you have a high load of games and you have some injuries and you need to rotate some players, then we just need to balance making sure that we win the game.

And that, of course, is sometimes giving us not the ability the same way to keep on pushing forward.

But of course, goal difference is important.

We have always been creating a lot of scoring chances, and still have a very high xG and statistics from the league so far.

So we always try to – when we have scored one goal or two goals – we always try to score the next one also.

It’s not that easy, but of course, it’s important.

But at the moment, with the load we have, we just need to make sure we get the wins.

Because I know that Man City fans (including Gethin) have still got traumatic flashbacks to when City lost it on goal difference to Chelsea.

I think it was three seasons ago.

Yeah, of course, I know about that.

That was tough, but hopefully it doesn’t go that way, and we still have only played one third of the season, or something like that.

So we still have a long way to go, both for us and Chelsea, and the other teams.

So goal difference is, at the moment, not the most important thing.

Just finally, when you’re looking ahead, in the league… do you look at fixtures and think: that’s one where we can score a shed load of goals?

No, I don’t do that.

What I’ve learned in this league is that if you start thinking about how many goals you’re going to score, and then suddenly you only get a point, so that doesn’t work. 

For me it’s not about that.

I think whoever we play in this league is giving us challenges, and each game for the teams playing against the former champion is something special.

So I think that there is an additional energy in all teams against us, which means we need to manage that.

But first of all, making sure we get the three points.

If we score a lot of goals, nobody is happier than I. But that can’t be the main focus in any game.

Photos: Helen M Jerome