EBENEZERWorld
There has been plenty of change over the summer at Stamford Bridge after last season left sour taste
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Football — Suzanne Wrack
Guardian writers’ predicted position: 3rd (NB: this is not necessarily Suzanne Wrack’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)
After a decade of domestic domination and the high of a domestic treble in 2024-25, last season’s one trophy – the League Cup – was not up to Chelsea’s usual standards and will leave a sour taste. A summer of change has followed, with some huge names departing. Millie Bright’s retirement , the exit of Catarina Macario, Sam Kerr and Guro Reiten to the NWSL in the US, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s move to Lyonnes and Niamh Charles’s to Manchester City reflect the scale of the change.
Meanwhile, Sonia Bompastor has welcomed Katie McCabe from Arsenal, Melvine Malard from Manchester United, Giulia Dragoni from Barcelona, Manaka Matsukubo from North Carolina Courage and Nelly Las from Leicester for Chelsea’s next cycle. Bompastor, in her third pre-season in London, is building the team for the way she wants to play and the environment she believes in. That process has taken time, with the balance needing to be struck between change and not throwing away a winning and working pre-existing culture.
She said: “I said last season we are facing a transition, and I think we are rebuilding in terms of refreshing the squad, rebuilding the culture within the team, and we’ll try our best. We’ll work as hard as possible to try to win trophies. There are fine margins, and sometimes as much as you work hard, things don’t always go the way you want. It’s up to us to make sure we turn things our way.”
The French manager inherited a strong side and had the influential and respected head of women’s football Paul Green at her side when she arrived. Now, with Emma Hayes’s old guard on the way out and the co-sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, more involved, Bompastor faces a bigger test of her skills and Chelsea’s future looks a little less predictable. The door is open though, and with the champions, Manchester City, having to contend with Champions League football a repeat of last season’s title triumph is far from assured.
Chelsea posted turnover of £21.3m for the year ending 30 June 2025, up from £11.5m in 2023-24, with Chelsea and Arsenal together bringing in more than the rest of the league combined. There were lots of positives in Chelsea’s accounts, with broadcast revenue up from £1.7m to £2.27m and matchday revenue up from £2.69m to £3.01m. Their loss after tax has jumped too, though, from £8.42m to £17.10m. However, a big part of that was their purchase of Kingsmeadow for £12.08m, which was widely reported to have taken place to help the men’s side of the club avoid breaching profitability and sustainability rules.
Bompastor heads into her third full season at Chelsea with little to prove after four trophies in two seasons. However, this campaign presents a new challenge, giving the opportunity to demonstrate how well she can guide a team through a transition period. Hayes became an expert at this, keeping Chelsea on top and winning trophies even during transition campaigns, but she had time to build the squad and the set-up enabled her to do that effectively. Previously, Champions League campaigns have been a burden, but weirdly this season, coming after a summer without an international tournament, it could be an advantage and a critical opportunity to get competitive minutes into players, shake off any rust and allow them to lay down a marker early in a tournament they are desperate to win.
There have been several arrivals but the recruitment of McCabe turned the most heads. Arsenal’s decision to let the 30-year-old Republic of Ireland captain go increasingly felt like a poor one after the full-back’s phenomenal season. Chelsea swooped and made McCabe feel wanted. Now, she is looking to turn from villain to hero for Blues fans. McCabe brings Champions League-winning experience, a battling spirit and huge versatility.
Chelsea conceded more goals last season than in recent years but still allowed less than a goal a game. The greater issue was in attack, their 44 goals being 12 fewer than in 2024-25, which was 15 down on the season before. Their figure for shots in the box dropped in the same period, from 332 to 315, to 269, which explains it. This is where the deposed champions need to improve most.
The 18-year-old academy graduate Lola Brown signed a new contract this summer, having signed her first professional deal in November 2024. Brown is highly rated by the club and fans and got her first minutes for the first team in the 2024-25 season in the Champions League, against Celtic and Twente, before making her WSL debut in a win over Tottenham towards the end of the campaign. She impressed on loan with Crystal Palace last year, making an impact in the second half of the season after the first was hampered by injury. Brown is ready to kick on and if she gets a chance expect her to shine.
“Chelsea are going through a bit of a transition phase at the moment. A lot of legends have gone and they left such a great legacy. Now it’s our turn to do that, follow in their footsteps and to build on what Chelsea is as a club” – the right-back Ellie Carpenter speaking to Sky Sports about Chelsea’s new era.
It’s all change this season with the club having announced they will play all their WSL home games at Stamford Bridge for the first time. Cup games will be played at AFC Wimbledon’s Cherry Red Records stadium, expanding their capacity for those fixtures from Kingsmeadow’s maximum of just under 5,000 fans to 9,000. The hope will be that the move grows the fanbase and accelerates the growth of matchday revenue. For the year ending June 2025, Arsenal’s matchday revenue was nearly double Chelsea’s at almost £6m.
After a decade of domestic domination and the high of a domestic treble in 2024-25, last season’s one trophy – the League Cup – was not up to Chelsea’s usual standards and will leave a sour taste. A summer of change has followed, with some huge names departing. Millie Bright’s retirement , the exit of Catarina Macario, Sam Kerr and Guro Reiten to the NWSL in the US, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s move to Lyonnes and Niamh Charles’s to Manchester City reflect the scale of the change.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Suzanne Wrack. Published 26 Aug 2026, 11:01 pm.
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