Keeping a large squad happy is proving such a challenge for Chelsea Women’s manager Emma Hayes that she’s turned to her hairdresser for help.
With so many quality players to choose from, the problem is the morale of the ones left out, rather than the ones featuring regularly.
“Look at my grey hair,” Hayes said at a recent press conference, lifting up her blonde tresses to let reporters examine her roots! “The hairdresser’s coming down this week!”
“When you have three games in a week, the squad has to respect the position and understand rotation from game to game,” she added. “As long as you know what your role is, what your job is, you have to be ready to perform. And this is a team right now that I put out knowing the level will not drop.”
Maintaining jollity in the dressing room is currently an impossibility, she admits.
“Of course I don’t make them all happy, and there are some miserable faces on a Saturday, but I can’t worry about what people think,” she insisted. “My job is to pick a team to win a game... and we’ve just won two games.”
With her girls scattered to the four winds for international duties, Hayes is off the hook for the next week or two... but the pressure will build again as the next game against Spurs in the Conti Cup (brought forward a day to 3 November) looms.
Meanwhile, Chelsea’s boys are putting on their face masks and showering in sanitiser before heading up the motorway this weekend for Saturday’s early-evening clash at Old Trafford in Covid-hot Manchester.
Where Frank Lampard is struggling is in defence. Juggling backs around like pick ’n’ mix sweeties in a paper bag simply isn’t working.
At 2-0 after half an hour of the match at the Bridge against Southampton, all looked rosy. Goals from Timo Werner and Kai Havertz were, however, followed by errors, with Kurt Zouma and Kepa Arrizabalaga (in for the injured Eddie Mendy) both guilty as Saints revived for a 3-3 draw.
“We don’t concede many shots on our goal, but when we do, we concede goals,” said Lamps, in one of those statements that you read and re-read until your vision is as blurred as a photocopied photocopy.
Maybe Ron Harris could be persuaded to come out of retirement. At 75 he still has an aura about him that today’s crop of defenders lack.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
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