It never rains, but it pours. And as the skies opened at Prenton Park, Emma Hayes looked genuinely stunned.
His Chelsea team lost a topsy-turvy match against Liverpool and, for the fourth time in the past month, a potential trophy slipped through their fingers.
At the final whistle, Hayes’ players – who had carried many expectations all season – fell to their knees in despair. There were tears. They looked like a team that had been knocked out, as opposed to a team that was still mathematically in contention to win the league title.
Chelsea lost a wild 4-3 game to Liverpool, with the teams trading six goals in the second half. Even so, with leaders Manchester City due to face Arsenal this weekend, there is no guarantee that the champions-elect will win their final two games.
Yet Chelsea’s deflated reaction made it clear that the tension built up over recent weeks and months has taken a considerable toll.
Not every performance in this series has been bad, but this one at Liverpool was. It was Chelsea’s fourth defeat in their last six games.
Retreat until the last day of March and this team had looked to win a quadruple to dispatch Hayes in style. That day they played in the Continental Cup final against Arsenal for the second year in a row and, as in 2023, they lost. After the international break, a first ever defeat against Manchester United knocked them out of the FA Cup at the semi-final stage. Chelsea were undefeated in this competition since September 2020.
Then, despite an impressive victory in the first leg, they succumbed to Barcelona in the Champions League on Saturday. And NNow, as of last night, the WSL title has also been taken away from them.
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It was a difficult period, which posed big questions for the team, both physically and psychologically. Three of the teams who started the first leg against Barcelona were unavailable for the match against Liverpool. But Chelsea have their own high expectations in terms of being able to cope with the challenges of competing on so many fronts. The collapse that followed was spectacular.
When Hayes announced his resignation in early November, pressure mounted on his team. The focus was understandably on his legacy, even if the long goodbye felt longer thanks to a never-ending stream of interviews and questions on the subject.
From that moment on, dark clouds began to circle over Chelsea. There was a recurrence of captain Millie Bright’s knee problem before Sam Kerr ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) just six weeks before backup striker Mia Fishel suffered the same injury. Chelsea pride themselves on the depth of their squad and spent big in January to secure them, but Swedish defender Nathalie Bjorn and Colombian striker Mayra Ramirez have spent time on the sidelines.
Form also dropped some of its senior players. Norwegian winger Guro Reiten had the best season of her career last year but has struggled to find that form this time around, while Fran Kirby is a shadow of her former self .
Yet Hayes is increasingly turning away from older players in favor of younger players.
In Bright’s absence, the captaincy was shared between 24-year-old Niamh Charles and 25-year-old Erin Cuthbert. A plan was hatched whereby Charles even handed the armband to his teammate at half-time of the Continental Cup final. In goal, long-term first choice Ann-Katrin Berger, 33, was sold to NY/NJ Gotham before the Champions League semi-final, having been replaced by Hannah Hampton, 23. Against Liverpool, Hayes opted to bring on Japanese teenage striker Maika Hamano ahead of Reiten.
These decisions were not necessarily ill-conceived. Hampton was largely exceptional as first choice, opening up an extra dimension in Chelsea’s game with his distribution. Cuthbert also more than rose to the occasion when given the opportunity to lead. But, collectively, they lent an unusual tinge of inexperience to a team that has won seven domestic trophies in the past three seasons.
It’s impossible to know to what extent Hayes’ impending departure caused this, but there has been an undeniable lethargy behind his comments in recent weeks.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t want to win another title… but it’s quite natural that teams who haven’t won a lot have that hunger,” she said after the FA Cup exit.
“I think the title is over,” she said last night. “Of course, mathematically it’s not, but I think the title is over.”
Hayes has long mastered protecting her players, just as she knows how to protect herself. It was on them that she focused, even indirectly, even though there were many questions about the composition of her team.
“I’m not going to be hard on the players after everything they’ve delivered over a long period of time. I don’t want to be an a******e about this.
But in a way, the pointing of the finger – the players or the tactics – doesn’t matter. Instead, hidden within this spectacularly entertaining WSL match was the sense of an ending. Once the whistle blew confirming the hosts’ 4-3 victory, and without the league actually being over, Hayes decided it was.
It was expected that the most fitting end for Hayes would be to come away with a trophy or two, but this is a much better reflection of a manager who has always been in control of her own destiny.
As the league awaited its final curtain call, it decided to leave the stage itself.
(Top photo: Naomi Baker/Getty Images)