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If ever there was an advert for the quality of the Women’s Super League, this was it. In a gut-busting end-to-end encounter between league leaders Manchester City and an unbeaten Chelsea, in which Georgia Stanway bagged the league’s 2000th goal, every ounce of fight was expended by the players on the Academy stadium pitch.
Goals pounded in one after the other with the pace of heavyweight fists and a draw, and a deserved sharing of the spoils, was the right result. Victory would have handed either side the advantage in a tight title race, instead the draw means City remain top, one point clear of Chelsea, who have a game in hand, while Arsenal sit a further three points adrift.
Within 30 seconds we were buckled in for a fast-paced ride. The Scotland forward Erin Cuthbert split the City defence with a through ball to her teammate Sam Kerr. The Australian lifted the ball over City’s Ellie Roebuck but somehow the young goalkeeper got some contact and forced the ball away, with Beth England, one of 10 players in Phil Neville’s squad for the SheBelieves Cup on the pitch, completely missing the tap in at the far post.
One minute later and Ellen White was released at the other end and thwarted only by a block from the Norwegian defender Maren Mjelde. Those 90 seconds were a taste of the 90 minutes to come.
There was no structure, rhythm or pattern to the game. Instead the ball ricocheted thrillingly from one end to the other. It would be the home team that would take the advantage. On 22 minutes a soft clearance fell to Janine Beckie out wide and the Canadian winger swept low to the near post for White to poke past Ann-Katrin Berger.
The goal punctured Chelsea’s swagger, but it should not have. There is a resilience to the London Blues. In the seven league games when Emma Hayes’ side have conceded first they have come back to win five and draw two, including home victories against Arsenal and City.
They were perhaps unlucky not to have been awarded a penalty when the ball brushed Demi Stokes’ arm from a free-kick but they found the equaliser shortly after, and against the run of play. City’s captain Steph Houghton headed away Mjelde’s cross but the ball dropped at the feet of Ji who swept in, with the ball taking a slight deflection off the head of Stokes on the way. Ji’s strike took her to 35 goals in 93 WSL appearances for Chelsea and the South Korean and Kerr seemed to be showing no ill effects from having travelled halfway around the world after Olympic qualifiers with their national teams.
After a marginally slower start to the second half City grew in ascendancy. And, just shy of the hour mark, they pounced. From a sweeping counterattack Lauren Hemp curled the ball towards Stanway, with Millie Bright and Mjelde caught napping, and the England forward clipped past Berger with her right foot. Chelsea though, had found their fight, levelling again through Eriksson, whose header was fumbled over the line by Roebuck. A penalty save by Berger from Stanway then kept them tied, after the midfielder Caroline Weir was fouled in the box.
Then, for the first time, Chelsea took the lead. A searing 30-yard strike from England flying into the corner past a helpless Roebuck for her 14th WSL goal of the season. The exhilarating encounter continued to treat the 3,542 fans, a skied Chelsea clearance was brought down by Weir’s thigh and she prodded a pass into the run of Hemp on the left and the 19-year-old lashed low past Berger to cut off Chelsea’s lead after just two minutes.
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