A busy week for Chelsea was capped off by the arrival of Thompson and they rolled out the red carpet for her as she was introduced to fans at Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n
It was an unpleasant sight for City, who have a massive task on their hands to close the gap their hosts carved out last season during an impressive, unbeaten domestic campaign that produced WSL, FA Cup and League Cup triumphs.<\/p>\n
But Chelsea are eager to remain on top and this was the perfect way to start the new campaign and remind their challengers why they have been so successful.<\/p>\n
As they did so often last season, they soaked up some early pressure, taking their time to figure out City’s dynamic shape and where they could exploit them.<\/p>\n
It did not take them too long to figure it out.<\/p>\n
Greenwood clearly had no answer to Carpenter’s pace and the Australian had constant joy on the right-hand side.<\/p>\n
Chelsea used the tactic well, continually giving Carpenter the ball and got players in the box for her to pick out. Beever-Jones, eventually, met one of those crosses with a close-range finish.<\/p>\n
The second goal came from the same side as Wieke Kaptein’s low delivery was allowed to roll through to Hamano, who slotted past her compatriot Yamashita.<\/p>\n
Even when Charles headed a whipped Greenwood free-kick past her own keeper, Lionesses hero Hannah Hampton, to give City a lifeline, Chelsea still looked comfortable, knowing they had impact players to come on off the bench and finish the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A busy week for Chelsea was capped off by the arrival of Thompson and they rolled out the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,4884,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-401139","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\/115154170944098748","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401139","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=401139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}