A jubilant Sonia Bompastor spoke to the media after her Chelsea side claimed a crucial 1-0 victory over London rivals Arsenal on Sunday, leaving them nine points clear at the top of the WSL.
It seems as though the general consensus is that Chelsea have likely wrapped up their sixth consecutive league title before the end of January, however Bompastor predictably wanted to focus on the bigger picture and insisted “that’s not what I think [about] at the moment.”
Embed from Getty Images“I’m very pleased with the result, as you can see today there’s a very fine margin between us. These performances can go one way or the other way and it went our way, which I’m really pleased with.”
“I think if you analyse the performance, it was a tough game and we didn’t control everything in the game, but we were able to score the goal and it gave us the result. We want to take it game by game and make the right decisions in every game to bring great results,” she told reporters in her post-match press conference.
For Chelsea fans, though, the day couldn’t have got much better. Not only did they beat their fierce London rivals, but Naomi Girma was unveiled as the club’s latest signing before kick-off after joining the Blues for a reported world-record transfer fee of £900,000 [$1.12m USD].
Strengthening their already excellent squad is a frightening prospect, and Bompastor spoke glowingly of her new player: “I’m really pleased to have Naomi with us. I think that she will bring a lot of quality to the squad and she will give me even more options.”
It's official. ✍️
— Chelsea FC Women (@ChelseaFCW) January 26, 2025
Naomi Girma plays for Chelsea Football Club. 🔵 pic.twitter.com/hb7OMyhE06
In a very tight game, it was the substitutes who made the difference for Chelsea as Lauren James’ silky run won Chelsea the penalty that Guro Reiten calmly slotted home to seal the three points. Bompastor expressed delight at the mentality the pair showed after coming off the bench, suggesting: “It’s never easy for them to not start a game, especially a London derby […] they had the right mentality, even if they were frustrated, they thought about the team first and when they came on they had a big impact.”
The Chelsea squad were seen celebrating euphorically in their usual post-match huddle, and Bompastor revealed in her press conference that the celebrations weren’t just because of the victory.
“I gave them two different messages,” she explained. “The first one I’ll keep for my players and staff; the second was that I gave them two days off, so they were really happy about that!”
After the game the Chelsea squad went into their usual huddle, and we saw a huge celebration from the Chelsea squad at the end of it. It was revealed that this wasn’t only about the result.
FEATURED IMAGE: Sebastien Murcier