If Emma Hayes’ Chelsea swan song promised to be the biggest show in town, it’s fair to say her curtain call might leave some audience members scratching their heads.
Just a few weeks ago the Blues were in the hunt for the quadruple, having lost just two of their last 28 games in all competitions. Now they’ve tasted defeat in their last two seasons and risk turning the last few months of Hayes’ tenure into a forgettable footnote in a great career.
Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final elimination at the hands of Manchester United means Chelsea are now experiencing their worst form since 2021. The statistics say that the Blues dominated their opponents at Leigh Sports Village in every possible way – with 70% possession and 26 registrations. shots to United’s five – and yet, as against Arsenal in last month’s Continental League Cup final, they came away empty-handed.
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“Nobody died, we lost a football game,” was Hayes’ pragmatic assessment of the game. “As a team we have to be better and we gave ourselves too much to do.”
The Chelsea boss speaks with the wisdom of someone who has been there, done it and won it all. She has fifteen trophies to her name in her twelve years at Kingsmeadow and even if she doesn’t add to those hauls this season, she will leave this summer as an undisputed icon of women’s football.
But after winning each of the last four Women’s Super League (WSL) titles and three consecutive FA Cups, it’s hard to shake the feeling that ending the season without any success would be something of an anticlimax for the old figurehead of the Blues. “We have to go home, turn around and play again on Wednesday so we don’t have a choice,” Hayes told club media on Sunday when asked about her side’s willingness to return. “We have to get over this.”
The small mercy of Chelsea’s packed fixture list is that it leaves little time for despondent reflection. Hayes and her team will have to dust themselves off and re-enter Wednesday’s WSL match against Aston Villa if they have any chance of ending the campaign on a high.
They will then travel to Catalonia, where they will face Barcelona in the semi-finals of the Champions League, before hosting Jonatan Giráldez’s side in the second leg at Stamford Bridge on April 27.
It is these two games that will most likely define Chelsea’s season. It was Barcelona that handed Hayes one of her most painful managerial defeats – a 4-0 deficit in the 2021 Champions League final – with Liga F leaders having also eliminated Chelsea in the semi-finals of the competition last season.
Should the Blues manage to get revenge on the Catalans in the coming weeks, you wouldn’t bet on them ending their European hoodoo on May 25 in Bilbao. That would certainly feel like the fairytale ending to Hayes’ brilliant Chelsea chapter.
Then there’s the small matter of the WSL title race to negotiate. The Blues are currently three points behind leaders Manchester City, although they do have a game in hand on Gareth Taylor’s side.
If both teams win all their remaining matches, the title will be decided on goal difference. With Chelsea having scored more goals than anyone else in the division, there is every chance the reigning champions will be in pole position once again when the sun finally breaks. will start the season in less than five weeks.
Yet there are concerns that the emotional maelstrom that has been steadily brewing since Hayes announced she would leave west London for a new job as head coach of the US women’s national team threatens to blow Chelsea off course at exactly the wrong time. It’s worth noting that on the same afternoon the Blues’ high hopes had been extinguished in Greater Manchester, another fanbase reflected on the pain of letting their totem manager depart without a final in the stands, as Liverpool suffered a shock defeat suffered against Crystal Palace in the Premier League. .
In the months since Jurgen Klopp announced his eyebrow-raising decision to step down this summer, it has felt as if the Reds were riding a tidal wave of emotions that have seen them through a painful injury crisis, a congested fixture list and a host of imperfect performances.
They too were touted to win the quadruple this season before Manchester United dumped them out of the FA Cup and Atalanta’s stunning 3-0 win at Anfield put their Europa League dream on life support. While Chelsea battled to come back from two goals down at Leigh Sports Village on Sunday afternoon, Liverpool toiled against Palace in the hope of returning to the top of the table.
But while both teams were favorites heading into their respective clashes, it became increasingly difficult to escape the feeling that it just wasn’t their day. “We just want to win every trophy we can for Klopp and give him the best send-off we can,” said Reds defender Conor Bradley when asked about Liverpool’s ambitions a few weeks ago.
It’s a sentiment shared at Kingsmeadow in recent times, with Chelsea talisman Lauren James commenting last month that “everyone has just that little bit more in them for Emma.” While such emotions can be stimulating, there is always the danger that they will cloud the senses and tire the muscles, just when having a robust body and mind is of paramount importance.
There is also a sense that the growing sense of occasion is starting to affect Hayes herself, with the Blues boss having made some uncharacteristic missteps in her recent dealings with the press. First came her comments about player relations, which led to some mutiny within her own ranks, then there was her row with Arsenal boss Jonas Eidevall and the rather unsavory accusations of ‘male aggression’ that followed.
That she chose to dodge her own doubts by bizarrely reciting a Robert Frost poem at a press conference last week points to a manager who may be feeling the unfamiliar heat of being in the media’s line of fire .
“I believe this team has delivered so much success for this football club and these fans over a number of years,” Hayes said Tuesday afternoon. “Sometimes I feel like the players are taken for granted.
“I don’t care about (people on the outside) – I just care about the fans. I care that they realize that the level of success we’ve had is always difficult to keep winning and winning and winning. I’m We are proud that we continue to do that, even if things don’t always go the way we want.”
The Chelsea boss is right: she has come such a long way during her time in west London that there is little reason to silence critics at this point. Whatever comes next, her WSL legacy will remain unparalleled. But for the fans she longs for, Hayes hopes the past few weeks will only inspire her team to greater heights in the coming weeks.