Big details costing Arsenal as Chelsea leave London rivals feeling blue
Big details costing Arsenal as Chelsea leave London rivals feeling blue
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Defeat at Stamford Bridge hits title hopes and casts doubts about their assertiveness and approach on and off the pitch. It’s the hope that kills you. Also conceding 21 shots on goal including six big chances: to be fair, that kills you. Also leaving Lauren James one-on-one with your defender, who inconveniently isn’t actually a defender: that also has a tendency to kill you. Also, the needless red card for lipping the referee. Also, not taking your own chances. Also, going into the game seven points behind in the first place. Regrettably, all fatal.
![[Chelsea's new signing Naomi Girma is introduced to the fans ahead of the Women’s Super League match at Stamford Bridge.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/12f72bc8d537ea59b56acefdf8b3db8a752b98e3/0_234_6000_3600/master/6000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Arsenal will grouse and Arsenal will grumble. Arsenal will sigh over small details and mutter deep-state conspiracies about refereeing standards. But Arsenal are also done. Chelsea’s first league double over them since 2019-20 also marks the factual end of what we technically, and generously, have to call their challenge for the 2024-25 Women’s Super League title.
Eleven points the gap two seasons ago. Five points last season. Now 10 points, with every chance of getting wider. Afterwards the new permanent head coach, Renée Slegers, mourned the “small details” that cost her team this game. But over the longer term it is increasingly the big details that are costing Arsenal, details that no refereeing controversy can remotely explain on its own.
With an immaculate sense of theatre, Chelsea unveiled their new signing Naomi Girma on the pitch just before kick-off. And yet if there was a certain hubris at play in parading their world-record defender under the noses of their jilted rivals, then as Girma stepped out of the tunnel into an absolute dose of British weather – torrential rain and howling gales – nobody could have blamed her for disappearing back down the tunnel and booking the first ticket back to San Diego.
