Chelsea Women are currently top of the Barclays FA Women’s Super League after winning 3-1 against West Ham yesterday at Rush Green, but Emma Hayes insists her side must keep taking one game at a time.
The Blues moved up to first place in the Women’s Super League table courtesy of Sophie Ingle, Ji So-Yun and Drew Spence’s second-half goals.
The top-of-the-table spot was helped by Manchester City losing their unbeaten start to the campaign due to a 1-0 defeat to 2018/19 champions Arsenal.
‘It’s great news,’ Hayes said after Chelsea assumed top spot, ‘but we just need to focus on taking one game at a time because that’s the most important thing for us.’
Although we dominated the first half yesterday, the Blues failed to convert our chances and were punished early on in the second half when West Ham’s substitute Adriana Leon placed her well-struck effort beyond Ann-Katrin Berger. However, the Blues showed character, fought back and responded with two quick-fire goals to secure the victory.
Ingle scored first to get us back into the game with a smart finish teed up by Ji, and minutes later the South Korean blasted a long-range effort into the top corner. Substitute Spence added the third in stoppage time which was set up by Fran Kirby, who marked her 100th Chelsea appearance when she came on in the closing stages of the contest.
The Chelsea Women manager was satisfied with the three points and praised the team for their efforts throughout, while demanding more from her players.
‘It’s what matters at the end that really counts. Of course we want to finish the game sooner but the result is the most important thing.
‘The team could have executed a number of things better and that’s for me to address this week in training. The amount of chances we created, we should have scored more goals but we focus on the three points and the team recovering from a goal down and for that reason I’m very proud of them.’
This time last season, the Blues’ league title hopes were over after six games having won one, drawn four and lost one, and Hayes spoke about the differences between both campaigns.
‘We haven’t lost the league, this time last year we were out of the league race and that’s really hard to take with 12 months of carrying that. That burden and that pressure, it feels like last season is finally over. We all know you can’t win the league in October but you can certainly be out of it.
‘It was good recovery from the team being a goal down and I don’t think our character last year would have got us back into the game, but this year is what the difference is.
‘We seem to like to go a goal behind and that is something I have to reflect on because going a goal behind on three separate occasions this year is a lot of pressure, but that happens.
‘I am just pleased with the squad and the bench, once again pushing the team forward and it was an unbelievable strike from Ji to put us ahead.’
Next up for the Blues is a trip to East Sussex to come up against Championship side Lewes in the Continental Tyres League Cup on Sunday. Following that, we host Manchester United for the first time ever at Kingsmeadow on Sunday 17 November.