A new season, a new opposing manager, new signings, but the same old story: a Chelsea win. Only just, but a win is a win, especially in a tricky opening-night fixture, as Sonia Bompastor\u2019s side embark on a quest for the club\u2019s seventh consecutive Women\u2019s Super League title.<\/p>\n
It saw Andr\u00e9e Jeglertz lose his first game in charge of Manchester City; Bompastor, by contrast, is still yet to lose a league fixture in English football and Chelsea remain unbeaten in the WSL since May 2024, a run of 26 league games.<\/p>\n
On Friday night they displayed many of the characteristics that have helped them dominate the division in modern times, particularly their ruthlessness in the final third by comparison to their rivals.<\/p>\n
Khadija Shaw lashed a rising drive narrowly over the crossbar with 11 minutes to go, but that was as close as it got to an equaliser for the team who finished fourth in the division last term. They had more bad news when Alex Greenwood and Lily Murphy sustained injuries in stoppage time.<\/p>\n
There were some positives for Manchester City, not least an encouraging debut from Sydney Lohmann in midfield following her switch from Bayern Munich. Iman Beney, one of the stars of Switzerland\u2019s run to the Euro 2025 quarter-finals, also made her debut late on, although their deadline-day acquisition, Grace Clinton, missed out with a slight knock.<\/p>\n
Chelsea, meanwhile, had hoped to welcome back striker Sam Kerr to competitive action for the first time in 20 months but, while she made the substitutes\u2019 bench, she was not brought on.<\/p>\n
Just under six weeks since the Euro 2025 final in Basel concluded a tournament which delivered packed stadiums and raucous crowds, it might have been a bit of a comedown for the players to walk out at Stamford Bridge and see the top tier of the stands essentially empty. Nonetheless, the Chelsea fans who did show up were enjoying what they saw, especially from one of their most important summer signings, the Australia right-back Ellie Carpenter. Her pacy bursts up the wing caused problems for Manchester City and she created the opening goal with an inch-perfect, low cross into the path of Aggie Beever-Jones.<\/p>\n
Manchester City had some hope when Chelsea\u2019s Niamh Charles scored an own goal to make it 2-1. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge\/Action Images\/Reuters<\/p>\n
Another of the hosts\u2019 new transfers, Alyssa Thompson, was introduced to the home fans on the pitch before kick-off to add to the mood of anticipation. This fixture came too soon for her debut after her deadline-day move from Angel City for a club record \u00a31.1m but Chelsea hope her arrival can help them in their quest to achieve the aim clearly specified in Bompastor\u2019s matchday programme notes: to win all four major trophies this term and go one better that last term\u2019s domestic treble. As for City, just one piece of silverware would be an uplift on their past three trophyless campaigns.<\/p>\n
The away side had been fortunate not to concede an early penalty when the ball struck Gracie Prior\u2019s arm inside the box and was diverted goalwards \u2013 the City goalkeeper Ayaka Yamashita showed great reactions to stop the deflected effort from Sandy Baltimore.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Moving the Goalposts<\/p>\n No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women\u2019s football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n During the first half Hannah Hampton picked up straight where she left off after her heroic performances for her country this summer, producing two high-calibre saves to deny Shaw. The first was a dive to her left to keep out a fierce strike in the game\u2019s first attack, and the second \u2013 when Chelsea were already 1-0 up \u2013 was a strong low save from close range.<\/p>\n The visitors, who deployed Lauren Hemp on the right wing instead of the left and enjoyed success when she cut inside on to her stronger left foot, were creating opportunities and went close again when Greenwood\u2019s curling free-kick rattled the crossbar with 10 minutes remaining of the first half. Vivianne Miedema also went close with a driving strike from outside the box in first-half stoppage time. Jeglertz\u2019s first half-time team talk in charge of Manchester City seemed to inspire them as they began the second half dominating the territory and preventing Chelsea from holding on to the ball, but Yui Hasegawa flicked a great chance narrowly wide from a Hemp cross.<\/p>\n They would be made to pay for failing to capitalise on their spell of pressure, because Chelsea\u2019s Maika Hamano was afforded the freedom of the penalty area at the other end to double the defending champions\u2019 lead. It was all too simple. Wieke Kaptein had time to pick out her pass to Hamano, as the Manchester City defending left much to be desired. They will not win the league if teams can score against them so easily.<\/p>\n City fans could be forgiven for fearing their team were set to limp to a disappointing toothless away defeat in a key game. Niamh Charles\u2019s own goal \u2013 a header into her own net from a whipped Greenwood free-kick \u2013 gave them hope, but they could not find an equaliser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new season, a new opposing manager, new signings, but the same old story: a Chelsea win. Only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-400969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-manchester","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115153801406250185","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}