Manchester United's Decline as Chelsea Shows Dominance
The slide has been coming. Now it feels unavoidable.
Manchester United, once the great project of the Women's Super League, are bottom of the table, carrying the worst goal difference in the division and looking nothing like the side that lifted their first major trophy in 2024 and strode into the Champions League quarter-finals under Marc Skinner.
That was supposed to be the launchpad. Instead, it looks like the high-water mark.
From landmark season to freefall
Skinner has gone. The foundations he laid suddenly resemble sand. United are on their longest winless league run since reforming in 2018 – six games without victory – and the opening fortnight of this campaign has stripped away any lingering illusions about where this team really are.
Two games. Two damaging performances. Two heavy blows for new manager Eva Olid, who has walked into a storm she did not create.
United have taken as few shots across their first two matches as any non-newly promoted side at this stage of a WSL season, equalling last year’s Leicester – the team that went down. That is the statistical backdrop to a 5-0 hammering by Chelsea that laid the situation bare in brutal fashion.
Olid didn’t try to dress it up. “I don't like the heads down,” she said after that defeat. “Heads up and we have to continue.” Defiance is her only option now.
But she is entitled to look up the chain and wonder what tools she has really been given.
A club that blinked
United’s problems did not start with Olid and they will not end with her. The lack of conviction around the women’s programme has been well documented: questions over investment, over ambition, over whether the club truly see this team as a priority.
This summer, the pivot was clear. Youth over experience. Potential over proven quality. A cheaper model, and one that ultimately pushed Skinner to the exit door – officially a “mutual” parting, but accompanied by his very public calls for more backing.
Those calls went largely unanswered.
Now Olid inherits a squad short on depth, short on confidence and, crucially, short on belief. On the pitch, the team’s timidity mirrors the club’s uncertainty off it. Heads drop quickly. Shoulders slump. A 5-0 defeat to Chelsea is not new – United have still never beaten them in the WSL, failing in all 14 attempts – but the manner of this collapse felt different.
United do not often lose by five. They do now.
Next up? Arsenal, live on television, with the whole league watching for signs of life. With so much to fix – structure, intensity, mentality – it is hard to know where Olid even begins. But she cannot afford another step backwards. Not in this state. Not against that opponent.
Chelsea bare their teeth
On the other side of that 5-0 scoreline, there was a message of a very different kind.
Chelsea had heard the noise after their opening-day draw with Aston Villa, when they failed to turn dominance into victory. Sonia Bompastor’s side responded the way elite teams often do when their pride is pricked: they went for the throat.
“When you have the opportunity to really hurt a team, the best way to respect them is to score as many goals as you can,” Bompastor said. Chelsea took that idea to heart. There was no mercy. No easing off. Just the strong preying on the weak.
This was not simply United’s frailty. Chelsea were sharp, slick and ruthless.
Lauren James, again, was the difference-maker. She has taken 19 shots in two games, more than anyone else in the league, and in this shape she looks every inch a devastating false nine. When Chelsea lack a traditional striker through injury or form, she offers an immediate solution.
But this was not the one-woman show of previous weeks. The game ran through Keira Walsh, who dictated tempo and angles. Sjoeke Nusken and Wieke Kaptein imposed themselves physically, dominating duels and pinning United back.
From full-back, Katie McCabe and Ellie Carpenter ran relentlessly beyond, stretching the pitch and carving out the pockets James loves to drift into. From deeper, Lucy Bronze stepped out from centre-back to slide passes into the final third. Every line of Chelsea’s structure pushed forward. James made it all stick.
Bompastor does have a balancing act to manage. James as a false nine is a powerful card to play, but it cannot be the only plan. The Premier League of the women’s game – Arsenal, Lyon in the Champions League – will not be as compliant as United were here. Chelsea will need others to shoulder more of the load as the season bites.
Even so, this felt like a warning shot. Question their cutting edge if you like. Question their evolution post-Emma Hayes. But ignore their ceiling at your peril.
Stanway’s new dimension at Arsenal
If Chelsea’s statement came in goals, Arsenal’s came in passes. Specifically, in the right boot of Georgia Stanway.
Back in the WSL after her move to Bayern Munich in 2022, Stanway looks a more complete midfielder. Her influence for England in the interim has been obvious, but her range for Arsenal already feels like something else.
On debut, she completed 98 passes. Across the first two matchweeks, only Liverpool centre-back Grace Fisk has completed more than Stanway’s 194. Crucially, 91 of those have gone into the final third – comfortably the most in the league.
That kind of precision changes the picture for Jonas Eidevall’s side. Arsenal no longer have to funnel every central creative responsibility through Mariona Caldentey. Stanway has already fashioned four chances, enough for Arsenal to have put Crystal Palace away at the weekend.
Alessia Russo, unusually, did not take those opportunities. Strikers have spells like that. The key for Arsenal is that the supply line is there, over and over again, from deeper areas.
With United next on the schedule, and Stanway already dictating games from midfield, the contrast between the two clubs could hardly be starker. One side searching for a foothold. The other quietly arming itself for a title push.
