Toppling Chelsea from their WSL perch will be the toughest of tasks

Nothing is inevitable in football. No matter how long the odds, there is always the chance of an upset. That said, there is an unmistakable air of invincibility around the Chelsea side crafted for a decade by Emma Hayes.

They were pushed to the wire by Arsenal last season before winning a third consecutive Women’s Super League title, by a point. In the 2020-21 campaign they pipped Manchester City by two points. In the preceding season, Hayes’s side were awarded the title on points per game after the campaign was halted by the pandemic with Chelsea a point behind City but having played a game less.

Each of those titles – three of their five under Hayes – have, on paper, been tight. The numbers, though, do not tell the full story. Chelsea have only got stronger. The team’s unwillingness to relinquish their crown was demonstrated by the manner in which they leapt on Arsenal’s January wobble, when the Gunners lost to Birmingham, before going on a run to the end of the season where each twist and turn only ever looked like a cat toying with a mouse before it feasted.

Scarily, Hayes’s side are now mature and well-oiled, at the peak of a team life cycle rather than the start or end of one. Sam Kerr and Pernille Harder are settled, Jessie Fleming has stepped up and Lauren James has been reconditioned to meet the demands of a team eyeing success in Europe. This summer, Hayes has dipped into the transfer window to strengthen the full-back area she rued not building upon last year. “It’s not that we didn’t target players, we just didn’t get the ones that we wanted,” she said a year ago, when asked why Chelsea had not recruited any players in that position.

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