Manchester City won the WSL title impressively last season but externally, there was an expectation Chelsea would bounce back.<\/p>\n
Bompastor was more cautious, insisting they were still transitioning after the departures of big-name players including Sam Kerr, Millie Bright and Guro Reiten.<\/p>\n
She said: “You need to consider the fact that Chelsea had the same coach for 12 years. It takes a while for players to adjust to a new coach, a new way of playing and a philosophy.<\/p>\n
“Even if you have really good players, it doesn’t just go like this. There are a lot of things we are doing behind the scenes for us to stay successful. <\/p>\n
“I was lucky enough to come in when [Hayes] left the team in a really good place. But last season we had a year where a lot of important players left.”<\/p>\n
But captain Erin Cuthbert said she was “not really” surprised at how good their level has been so far.<\/p>\n
“We had a good time to build in pre-season and a good trip away. The quality was always there, we just weren’t clicking,” she added.<\/p>\n
“Manchester City ran away with the league in the end, but we were there or thereabouts. I feel this time the team’s just gone up another level.”<\/p>\n
As well as adapting more to Bompastor’s ways, and adding defensive solidity to a creative frontline, work has gone into improving the club’s culture.<\/p>\n
Cuthbert said before Wednesday’s win there was “really good momentum and a good feeling” in the squad – so can they kick on now?<\/p>\n
“For me, the mental aspects and cultural aspects are just as important,” admitted Bompastor. <\/p>\n
“We probably needed to rebuild a little bit of that going into this new season. We reflected a lot on how we wanted to set up the process for that. <\/p>\n
“Right now, we are in a good place. When you are able to get good results, it’s not only about the tactical aspects. It also has to be about mentality, culture and values.<\/p>\n
“I think we have clarity on where we want to go as a team and how we want to get there, and that’s just as important.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester City won the WSL title impressively last season but externally, there was an expectation Chelsea would bounce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-817287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}