For the second year running it started with disappointment as Chelsea were dealt a loss in their opening game of the Women’s Super League season. This time, instead of a narrow and contentious defeat to title rivals Arsenal, it was a shock result against newly promoted Liverpool and three penalties going 2-1 in favour of the Reds.
For the five-time WSL winners, such alarm bells never sound very loudly and as Emma Hayes’ side have proved over the years, all that matters is how the season ends and who is top come that final whistle. So, an opening-day loss, even from the most unexpected of opposition, was nothing to worry about as the Blues ended up crowned champions yet again Sunday.
– Chelsea beat Reading, secure another WSL title
– Hamilton: Chelsea win WSL title amid Hayes’ ‘hardest year’
We are told week in, week out, that the WSL is the most competitive it has ever been, yet while this is the seventh straight season in which the title has gone down to the final day, it’s the sixth time Chelsea have been involved. Indeed, not since missing out on the title on the last day of the 2014 campaign have Chelsea failed to win on the last (official) day of matches.
Save for a handful of seasons that have seen the title sewn up with a fair number of games still to play, there is consistently little margin for error at the top end of the table, even if each season brings about the same old predictable drubbings against the weaker teams in the pack.
In many ways, 2022-23 was a season that followed the WSL script, with a last-day decider and the Blues victorious once again. But like snowflakes, fingerprints and boy bands, no two seasons were quite the same, not least with the increased improvements from Manchester United — it was their turn to push Chelsea all the way — rather than Arsenal or Manchester City.
Injuries, significant dips in form and fixture congestion kept the Blues’ sixth league title far from a certainty. Where Hayes’ side would have produced drubbings along the way to their silverware in previous years, they spluttered and stumbled this season. Before April, only one of their first 15 games — a comprehensive 8-0 win over a dilapidated Leicester City team — was won by a margin of more than two goals. Long-term injury layoffs to Fran Kirby and Pernille Harder saw the attack lose some of its lustre, and their focus switched: instead of attacking from the back, they were defending from the front.
