Chelsea beat Manchester City 2-0 at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, with Mayra Ramirez and Guro Reiten’s late goals sending them top of the Women’s Super League (WSL).
Sonia Bompastor’s side scored twice within four minutes, in the 75th and 79th minute respectively, to make it seven wins out of seven in the WSL.
For City, their unbeaten run in all competitions came to an end in London and they are now two points behind their opponents who have a game in hand as well.
It was a statement win for Chelsea and a historic one for Bompastor who became the first WSL manager to win her first seven league games in charge.
Almost 20,000 fans were in attendance to watch the derby between the top two teams of the WSL table.
In the first half, the two teams were fearful to take risks and become threatening with only a few chances in front goal.
Ramirez broke the deadlock on the 75th minute as she muscled past Alanna Kennedy to win a through ball from Maika Hamano and after beating Alex Greenwood, she gave the lead to Chelsea.
Four minutes later, the Blues doubled their lead after Lucy Bronze found Geiten and the Norwegian sent the ball past the City goalkeeper Ayoka Yamashita, into the bottom left corner.
“I chatted with my players saying we need to be more brave and confident to make better decisions, showing them some videos clips on where we could control the ball and the game more and I think it worked better in the second half for sure. Credit to my players because they were able to find the confidence and recognise and scan the good spaces on the pitch,” Bompastor said to The River during the post-match press conference about how she inspired the team during half time to go and win the game.
Manchester City manager Gareth Taylor made only one change to the team who beat Hammarby on Tuesday in Manchester with Jill Roord replacing Laura Blindkilde Brown.
“It was a game of errors, lot of opportunities came from mistakes, in the first half they made more than us but we were not able to capitalise,” Taylor said in the post-match press conference.
Chelsea are now on 21 points, two more than City and if they win their game in hand against Manchester United on November 24, they will extend their lead to five points over the Citizens.
Both clubs have Women’s Champions League fixtures with Chelsea hosting Celtic on November 20 at Stamford Bright while Man City will travel to Sweden to face Hammarby on November 21.
Rizzato Raul
Jade Oates
James Woodham