The guard of honour formed by Chelsea players and staff, past and present, to bid farewell to club captain Millie Bright and their joint all-time record goalscorer Sam Kerr marked the end of a defining era in the club’s history.

That was an era shaped by their former manager Emma Hayes, the now-United States head coach who watched on at Stamford Bridge as her successor, Sonia Bompastor, led Chelsea to a 1-0 win against Manchester United thanks to a trademark Kerr finish. But victory fooled no-one that their problems had suddenly disappeared.

Chelsea, who had won the league for the past six seasons, failed to retain their Women’s Super League title, finishing third and missing out on automatic Champions League qualification.

Their 49-point tally was their worst over a full, 12-team WSL campaign. Chelsea’s dominance was always bound to end as other teams closed the gap to the west London side, and Manchester City seized the opportunity with both hands.

By the serial trophy winners’ standards, and with a squad wage bill of £14.5million ($19.4m), the highest in the WSL according to 2024–25 accounts, this campaign has been, as Bompastor put it on Saturday, “disappointing”.

The French head coach has repeatedly referenced the need for the right “culture”, “winning mentality” and “support for the players” in her media appearances this month. “I could give you a long list of things,” she said on Saturday, regarding areas of improvement.

This season has been one of transition, marked by key player and staff exits, signalling a changing of the guard. This is the story of Chelsea’s exceptional season of disappointment.

Sonia Bompastor said the season had been ‘disappointing’ (Harriet Lander – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

How psychological scars were inflicted at the Etihad

There have been several occasions this season when Chelsea have faltered, exposing larger gaps in their armour.

Their lack of ruthlessness up front ultimately cost them in their Champions League quarter-final defeat to Arsenal, and Bompastor knew it. “It’s probably been the story of our season,” she said that night.

Then came May’s FA Cup semi-final defeat against City, the first time in 13 years Chelsea lost a game in which they led by two or more goals. Once labelled mentality monsters, Chelsea lost control and looked, in captain Erin Cuthbert’s words, “vulnerable” after conceding, a worrying issue throughout the season.

Nothing summed up the team’s disconnect more than the moment in extra time when several outfield players, walking with their heads down and their backs to the ball, were unaware that goalkeeper Hannah Hampton had played a goal kick, only for City’s Yui Hasegawa to pounce and Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw to head home the winner.

“We all feel different emotions and we’re all playing a different game and scenario,” said Cuthbert. “Maybe getting us all back on the same page is really important.”

But the moment Chelsea’s season unravelled was a 5-1 defeat away to City on February 1 — a week after losing 2-0 to Arsenal, the first time they had suffered back-to-back league defeats in a decade. The City loss was a snapshot of their season: they were exposed in transition and from set pieces.

Sources with knowledge of the matter — who, like all those mentioned in the article, spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity to protect relationships — said at the time that the discontent off the field along with “infighting and power struggles” involving players and staff at all levels had begun to affect performances on it.

The ripple effects of the thrashing ran deep. Bompastor was questioned publicly about her future. She spoke about her team’s lack of confidence and said: “When the team is not in a good place in terms of dynamics, it reflects in the body language”.

Bompastor was honest. “If people think I’m not the right person to stay for this job at the club, I’ll be happy to go,” she said. “But I will never give up. I know football, sometimes it happens. But the institution in Chelsea is a lot more important than myself.”

The “institution” sent a very clear signal in backing their coach.

Five days after the City loss, the club announced Bompastor’s contract extension until 2030. The men’s team’s sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart — who officially joined in early 2023 as part of changes under Chelsea’s new ownership group, BlueCo, which took over in 2022 — were both quoted in the press release citing their “belief in her leadership, vision and the stability she brings the club”.

Four days later, after 13 years at the club, head of women’s football Paul Green was dismissed. He had seen his autonomy reduced, which the club refutes, and his process questioned. Winstanley and Stewart’s increased involvement was having a negative impact on the women’s team, sources observed. ⁠⁠Formal sign-off on decisions affecting the women’s team had to go through several people above Paul Green which some people involved in dealing with the club felt led to delays.

Paul Green and Millie Bright hold last season’s FA Cup (Catherine Ivill – AMA/Getty Images)

Green called Bompastor to inform her of the club’s decision, one which had significant ramifications. CEO Aki Mandhar, who spoke with Green after the City defeat, met with the players the morning following Green’s departure, and according to the club, paid tribute to Green, said she would share next steps as soon as possible and apologised for how quickly things had happened.

According to sources, however, Bright spoke up. She said Green should at least be able to come in and say goodbye given his services to the club. Players have felt Green’s absence keenly and sources say some players feel they have fewer people to confide in.

A staff in transition off the pitch…

Chelsea’s rationale for the change was that, following Hayes’ departure, there was an imbalance in leadership.

Over her 12 years at Chelsea, Hayes built the team from the ground up as manager. She combined coaching with wider authority and leadership, whereas Bompastor, as head coach, has a technical and performance remit.

Chelsea hired consultancy firm Bloom Sports Partners to conduct a review of the women’s set-up, which included surveying and interviewing staff and players about each department’s performance. Chelsea declined to comment in regards to the hiring of the Bloom consultancy.

The club identified some areas that required improvement: not coaching and on-pitch preparation, but specifically leadership bandwidth and performance, clarity of ownership and the pace of decision-making were not seen as operating at the level expected of an elite women’s football programme.

They concluded the women’s programme needed a stronger, more clearly defined leadership structure for future success. Green, one of the most respected operators in the women’s game, was the one to go.

At the end of February, Chelsea announced the arrival of former FC Nordsjaelland director of football Phil Radley as their new women’s sporting director. Bloom, which has also conducted executive searches for several NWSL sides, were involved in the recruitment process.

As director of football since 2022, Radley oversaw all football operations at the Danish side, including the men’s and women’s programmes and the girls’ and boys’ academies. He was responsible for the women’s team for the 2022-23 campaign and hired the women’s team’s first sporting director, Jessica Davis, who led the side to a league and cup triumph in the 2023-2024 season. Winstanley and Stewart were both quoted on the press release announcing Radley’s arrival at Chelsea.

Radley, whom the club feel is building positive relationships with the team, has a huge first summer ahead of him in terms of player and staff recruitment.

Green is not the only staff member to depart. Heather Cowan, head of operations and player services who joined in September, lead analyst Jamie Cook, who lifted 17 trophies over the past decade with the team, and Neil Greig, head of performance services since Bompastor’s first season in charge, are all due to leave, or have left already.

Goalkeeping coach Chris Williams, who left Tottenham Hotspur in April, has recently joined Chelsea. After Stuart Searle, the goalkeeping coach under Hayes, went with her to the United States women’s national team (USWNT), along with four other key staff members, Seb Brown, Chelsea women’s academy goalkeeping coach, stepped up.

That same summer, Chelsea women appointed their new CEO Mandhar from The Athletic. She had not previously worked in men’s or women’s football.

“When I first got here, (there were) so many trophies… I could only mess that up, so (I thought) stay away from the football side,” Mandhar said light-heartedly at the Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit in late February.

But the crossover between on- and off-pitch matters is inextricably linked with new faces in different positions of influence across the board.

… And changes on it, too

Chelsea have suffered a severe bout of ‘second-season syndrome’.

It is a similar situation to when Arne Slot replaced Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool in the men’s game. Slot and Bompastor did not make drastic changes when they arrived, sticking to what had previously worked. Slot won the Premier League title with Liverpool, while Chelsea won the domestic treble and went unbeaten in the league. But such success was always going to be difficult to replicate, especially when the squad needed rejuvenating and as Bompastor began to stamp her mark on the team.

In Bompastor’s second season in charge, the factions in the dressing room, consisting of the hugely successful old guard under Hayes and Green on the one hand and Bompastor’s new signings on the other, became even more pronounced. That led to divisions among players and staff.

Bompastor also began to change the team’s playing style, moving away from Hayes’ more direct and transitional approach to a possession-based style. Such a shift in approach can cause players to be caught in between two styles of play, according to sources.

Chelsea have suffered from ‘second season syndrome’ (Ben Whitley/PA Images via Getty Images)

Others add that less emphasis has been placed on tactical and technical aspects in training sessions and team meetings this season, which has led to gaps in understanding, particularly among younger players who may need more guidance. Bompastor trusts players to think tactically in match situations but some players feel they are not being given enough instruction.

Opponents did not consider Hayes’ Chelsea as pretty nor did they play the best football, but they always found a way to win. That sense of inevitability has dissipated, however, especially this season. Other WSL team sources noted that Chelsea “had lost their fear factor“.

When a team so accustomed to winning began to lose, it is no wonder the cogs of a well-oiled machine began to grate.

“You need to make sure that culture comes from the club but also from the players,” Bompastor said after the final game of the season. “It’s about standards, behaviours. It has to be natural for everyone to understand. When you come on the pitch, these are the standards we expect you to deliver every day, not only one week off, one week on. That’s something we have been talking about.”

Change is afoot, and that can be unsettling.

Chelsea’s options at centre-forward, as it stands, include Mayra Ramirez, who has not played all season — bar a handful of minutes on Saturday — due to injury, and Aggie Beever-Jones.

Academy graduate Beever-Jones is yet to sign a new deal, despite her contract, which has the option to extend for a year, expiring in the summer. The 22-year-old had attracted interest from Manchester United earlier this season. That Chelsea have made a minimum £1million salary offer to City’s star striker Shaw, whose contract expires in the summer, is telling.

Cuthbert, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, Niamh Charles, Wieke Kaptein, Sjoeke Nusken, Nathalie Bjorn and Kadeisha Buchanan all only have one year left on their deals. The club have secured Hampton’s future and have offered Lucy Bronze a new short-term deal.

Chelsea still have huge talent and promise in their squad. Last summer’s deadline day signing, the 21-year-old USWNT winger Alyssa Thompson, has been their brightest spark while Veerle Buurman, 20, has stepped into the backline with maturity beyond her years. Lauren James has signed a new contract until 2030 while promising full-back Chloe Sarwie signed her first professional contract with the club until the summer of 2028.

The numbers that reveal the downturn

It is worth noting that, barring last year, of Chelsea’s five previous league triumphs, four went down to the final matchday. In Hayes’ last season, they pipped City to the title only on goal difference, albeit with a 6-0 thrashing of Manchester United.

The graph below, however, shows that in Hayes’ last three seasons, Chelsea comfortably created more goalscoring opportunities than they conceded. Since Bompastor has taken over, they are still creating more than they concede but the gap has narrowed, particularly around three-quarters of the way into the season.

At the other end of the pitch, Hayes’ Chelsea managed to restrict opponents’ xG (a measurement of the quality of chances created) but that value has increased under Bompator this season, as the graph below shows — with the red line (xG against) creeping upwards. Chelsea conceded around 11.3 shots per game compared to 8.6 last season, with games becoming tighter than they have been used to in recent years.

For the first time since the 2021-22 season, Chelsea have underperformed expectations in front of goal, as shown below. Their 43 non-penalty goals (from an xG value of 44.7) were the third-highest in the league, but they did not outscore expectation in the same way they have in previous campaigns.

They overperformed in front of goal over the previous three seasons, scoring 21.4 goals above their xG in 2022-23, 10.5 in 2023-24 and 6.7 in 2024-25.

When compared with their level this season — with -1.7 goals being far closer to the quality of chances they created — the drop-off in output looks far more stark. They have also been less dangerous and consistent from set pieces, scoring 3.6 goals per 100 set-pieces this season compared to five last year.

A cluttered treatment room and inconsistent transfer policy

Injuries and slower-than-expected recoveries disrupted Chelsea’s season. The club lacked a consistent No 9, with Ramirez unavailable, Kerr having limited gametime after a long lay-off and Beever-Jones struggling for fitness.

Defensive instability was also a major issue. Injuries to Bright, Naomi Girma and Bjorn forced them into makeshift solutions. That was highlighted in the FA Cup semi-final, when Bronze and Charles partnered at centre-back, despite neither being a natural fit there. Buchanan only returned in February from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury sustained in November 2024.

Elsewhere, Bronze had a delayed start to the season due to injury, while Macario and Charles missed significant spells midseason. Kaneryd also moved in and out of the side because of form and fitness. Greig, a former head of medical and director of player health at Brentford, left Chelsea Women in May and has joined Loughborough University’s sports department as head of performance support.

Given the squad’s challenges with fitness and key players’ contracts expiring, it was surprising Chelsea, usually the masters of succession planning, did not sign any players in the January transfer window. “I would have liked to be in a better place in terms of the last transfer window,” Bompastor said after the City defeat.

Chelsea have suffered plenty of injuries this season (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

A move which has left many confused is why Maika Hamano was loaned to Tottenham. The 22-year-old may have wanted more gametime but surely would have been a valuable asset at the most crucial time of the year.

As The Athletic previously reported, there has been a shift in strategy, via Winstanley, to increase the number of player sales made. In March, the club sold Macario, whose contract was due to expire, to San Diego Wave.

Despite naming Guro Reiten, another player in the final months of her contract, in their Champions League squad for the knockout stages, the club loaned the Norway international to Gotham FC in March. She produced an emotional farewell video to Chelsea fans after agreeing a three-year deal as a free agent following her loan move.

With three games of the season remaining, Bright, who was offered a one-year contract, ended her career with immediate effect after more than 12 years at the club and 20 major trophies.

“Both physically and mentally I’ve been ready to say goodbye… my body is tired,” she told the BBC.

So, what happens next?

A transition was needed and inevitable, but rebuilds take time.

Bompastor said on Saturday that the transfer market will be key to building a quality squad with depth to compete on all fronts — but that is the tip of the iceberg.

With major outgoings on and off the pitch, Chelsea are entering a new chapter of their storied history, and one that brings uncertainty.