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14 hours ago
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A swaggering Chelsea cast off any suggestion that they had lost the ability to kill off games, putting five goals past a worryingly lacklustre and lackadaisical Manchester United.
Sonia Bompastor, the Chelsea manager, said: “When you have the opportunity to really hurt a team, the best way to respect them is to score as many goals as you can, to create as many opportunities as you can.
“Of course, it’s never easy to see the other team or the other manager concede five goals because if I was the other team, I would be really sad. For me, showing respect to the opponent is having that desire and mentality to score as many goals as possible. That’s the difference between the great teams and the good teams.”
United’s players and fans may have preferred disrespect if that is the case. Instead, it was another bruising result for the new manager, Eva Olid, and her side after an underwhelming performance in their 2-1 defeat against London City Lionesses in the opening game of the season.
Olid needed a result to give her some breathing room and her team some confidence, having had just three weeks to get used to one another before the start of the season, and this early into a project there has to be some grace.
For their opponents this game had been talked about as something of a must‑win after the Blues were held to a 1-1 draw by Aston Villa on the opening weekend despite dominating that match.
To some extent the concern over Chelsea’s profligacy did not need to be too deep. They were at their creative best against Villa and were without the injured centre-forwards Melvine Malard and Mayra Ramírez while Aggie Beever-Jones, who led the line against the Midlands side, had not scored in the Women’s Super League since September 2025. The off-target Beever-Jones was relegated to the bench for the trip to United. Instead, Lauren James and Sjoeke Nüsken worked away interchangeably up front.
The visitors were similarly fluid in other areas too, and that flexibility was super effective. Chelsea were unpredictable and James’s free‑to‑roam role put their star talent at the centre of everything.
Lucy Bronze’s marauding forward yielded the opener when she sent a looping ball over the top and Dominique Janssen should have been first to it, but the United defender misread the fall of the ball and a stalking Wieke Kaptein nipped it away from her. The Dutch midfielder squared to Nüsken who fired in from close range.
The second goal, which eluded them against Villa, arrived just over 10 minutes later. A diving header from the new recruit Andrea Medina cleared a cross whipped in from the left but the hard-working Bronze was there to meet it, clipping it into the path of Keira Walsh, who took a step and powered in from the edge of the box.
The hosts’ heads dropped, which left their manager unhappy. “In football we know anything can happen,” Olid said. “You can be losing 2-0 and can end up winning. I don’t like the heads down. Heads up and we have to continue. Everything is about confidence.”
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A very brief brighter spell for United after the break was snuffed out by the visiting team and James finally got on the scoresheet after the hour, latching on to Walsh’s defence‑splitting pass and shrugging off Janssen before sending a low drive into the net.
Chelsea’s fourth goal rubbed salt in for a very wounded United side. Janssen, under no pressure, failed to respond to an ambitious burst from Kaptein and the Chelsea midfielder pickpocketed the centre-back and slipped the ball wide to the onrushing Ellie Carpenter, whose first effort was kept out by Phallon Tullis‑Joyce but her follow-up found the net.
Bronze then added to United’s misery during the final minute of added time, hammering the ball in after Walsh knocked a corner back into the melee in the six-yard box.
It became a training exercise for Chelsea and the hosts failed in their attempts to limit the damage. Things look as if they will get worse for Olid’s side before they get better, with a trip to the Emirates Stadium to play Arsenal coming up next weekend, but Olid said she will not divert from the style of football she wants the team to commit to playing.
“If you start changing, then you are never going to build what you want to build,” she said. “It’s a process. I know it’s so hard, the process, because this beginning is hard. Nobody wants to lose games, but we have to be faithful to what we want to do, because I think that long term will give us the wins.”
