Bompastor says that the title race is over after Arsenal loss | OneFootball

Chelsea Women boss Sonia Bompastor says that the title race is over after her side’s loss to Arsenal in the Women’s Super League.

Beth Mead opened the scoring before Mariona Caldentey doubled Arsenal’s lead at Stamford Bridge leaving Chelsea six points behind league leaders Manchester City having played a game more.

Last season Bompastor’s team won the league without losing a match, but they have found defending the title much more difficult this year.

The French manager explained what this result means for Chelsea’s title hopes.

“Today we understand the situation,” she said. “We know the title race is probably gone, but our mentality is to fight until the very end.

“We will never give up. Now we have to focus on getting points and staying in that second position and doing the best we can.

“There is a big gap and if City win tomorrow then the gap is nine points,” she added. “They are in control and if they perform at their best it will be a difficult gap to close. My job is to make sure I lift everyone up and we take the learnings and we go into the next game ready to perform.

“We will have one or two days really low but we will have a good conversation, as usual, and from that everyone will be lifted.”

Bompastor was also full of praise for Arsenal after the match.

“Arsenal were a great team today,” Bompastor explained. “I think the turning point in the game is when they scored the first goal. We know these games run on fine margins and when a team scores the first goal it helps a lot mentally. When we conceded the goal I had to react and help the team to do something different on the pitch.

“The last 15-20 minutes we were trying with a lot of energy but we couldn’t score. Maybe coming back to 2-1 would have been good with the energy of the fans but we could not score and it didn’t work. If you analyse the performance there is room for improvement for sure.

“We did not start as strong as usual. It was a quick turnaround from the last game and we had to travel so legs were not fresh. We were playing a home game so we need to make sure we start as strong as possible, but in football sometimes this happens.”