“When we talk about ambitions, we have to put words into action,” said a frustrated Sonia Bompastor after Chelsea dropped their first points of the season to Leicester. “I want my players to be ready from the start of every match.”
The demands at the top level are brutal, but Chelsea never rises to the top by luck or chance. Bompastor has willingly taken the 'taskmaster' baton from Emma Hayes, who left in the summer, and has gotten to work on it – impressively quickly.
Under the Frenchwoman's reign, Chelsea have opened up a six-point lead at the top of the Women's Super League, entered the Champions League knockout stages with a 100 percent record and scored an average of 2.8 goals per 90 in all competitions.
They were virtually unstoppable. But the trip to the King Power provided a well-timed reminder that, despite the provocation, the WSL remains fiercely contested and no team is infallible.
Bompastor complained of a lack of intensity, intent and efficiency as Chelsea were held to a 1-1 draw despite 82 touches in the Leicester field and 28 shots on target. The expectation is to win, and anything less is ultimately a disappointment.
Yet it is remarkable that we have reached the halfway point of the season with fifteen wins and one draw from sixteen games. And while something like this seems simple on paper with the best-rounded squad (and biggest budget) in the WSL, things are rarely that simple.
Once impregnable dynasties may fall – take the implosion of Manchester City under the great Pep Guardiola as proof – but this empire, at least for now, is unbreakable.
The ideas are fresh, with a new identity, as Bompastor tries to transform Chelsea into a team that wins with possession and style over sheer power. She wants the same winning machine that Hayes built, just with a touch of French sophistication, or as she would put it, je ne sais quoi.
After Chelsea beat Celtic in November to secure European progression with two games to spare, Bompastor said: “It's important to work hard so that things can become easy even if they aren't easy.”
Simplicity is hard to find in football. Some teams have a habit of making results look effortless – Chelsea are in that category – but the process of getting there is often harder than it seems. What are the real points of difference of Bompastor?
“You never turn off your brain. It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” she told Sky Sports before beating title rivals Man City in November. And that obsession with what she calls the “perfect game model” is what continues to push the standards to different levels.
She arrived with respect for Chelsea's pre-existing culture and trophy-laden history, but Hayes' style of football was never going to marry a ball-playing midfielder who prefers a fast-paced game that is exciting and exhilarating. Bompastor has found the perfect balance between consistency and change to ensure players' confidence in its philosophy.
“She asks a lot of us,” forward Guro Reiten said recently. “There are things in training and in the way she wants us to play that are a little bit different, but it's working well so far. Whatever Sonia wants me to do, I'll do it.”
Without the luxury of injured duo Sam Kerr and Lauren James – Chelsea's most productive duo in recent campaigns – Bompastor has had to rely on the likes of Reiten to deliver. But here her attention to detail and softer style (Hayes was typically hard-nosed) has led to a healthy, team-led approach.
Kerr and James are outsiders – Hayes loved that. They are unpredictable and individualistic. Now Chelsea has others to carry that mantle, it just feels a little more connected. Thirty-one goals – at least ten more than any other team – scored by fourteen different players. In fact, no other team in the division has achieved double figures for several scorers (Brighton are the closest with nine).
Reiten was a big beneficiary, tucked away to operate more centrally and scoring six times in 10 WSL starts. But she's not the only one. Johanna Rytting Kaneryd is having the season of her life, Mayra Ramirez has scored big goals in big games (against Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City), while young Aggie Beever-Jones has the second best minutes-to-goal ratio in the league .
Now the refinement part. How does Bompastor take such a talented group and shape them into pass masters? Chelsea's distribution statistics are the least flattering dynamic of their game. They average fewer passes per 90 than Man City, Arsenal and Brighton, and their ball possession in all ten WSL matches (57 percent) is much lower than Bompastor would like – including the accuracy of the passes.
Most great football dynasties combined the will to win with the wow factor. Hayes' Chelsea used mentality as their superpower.
If Bompastor can instill her core principles of strong possession dominance on her way to silverware this season, her relentless pursuit of perfection may be closer than she thinks.
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