Emma Hayes has created a Chelsea dynasty but WSL is more ...

Chelsea had to wait until the final day of the Women’s Super League season to confirm what everyone suspected — that their dominance of English football would continue with yet another title, their fourth in a row. But when it finally happened, at the end of a campaign in which they were taken all the way by Manchester United, there was a strange feeling to accompany the success.

Winning at Reading — a result which relegated the hosts in front of a crowd of 5,000 mainly made up of Chelsea fans — was expected. But for title-winning manager Emma Hayes, sending her friend and opposition manager Kelly Chambers down added a layer of awkwardness on an afternoon when the PA system played ‘We Are The Champions’ and declared the visitors worthy title winners, all while their own players contemplated the ramifications of relegation.

The game did not have the feel of a title decider — there was more an air of an exhibition match, a showcase of just how great this Chelsea side are. It takes an exceptional effort to win back-to-back titles and even more to win four in a row. Chelsea have now won six WSL titles, twice as many as any other side in the league’s 12-year history, and this was achieved with a record points total.

Sam Kerr and Guro Reiten put paid to some stubborn first-half Reading resistance and the second half was a procession, Chelsea’s coronation.

It afforded time for reflection on Hayes’ phenomenal achievements. She has created a dynasty, winning five of the past six WSL titles, the same record boasted by Pep Guardiola at Manchester City in the Premier League.

This Chelsea era will go down as one of the most successful of any women’s team in the world. Much like Vic Akers’ Arsenal, who still hold the record for the most league titles and domestic trophies and are still the only English women’s side to have been crowned champions of Europe, Hayes’ Chelsea have been aggressively dominant. What is even more impressive about their success is that it has happened in the most competitive age in women’s football. There are now not just two or three teams competing for the title but four and also a stronger and hungrier middle pack trying to break into Europe.

What Hayes has done at Chelsea, with the help of an ambitious hierarchy and tremendous resources, is strategic and smart. It is a winning project that is built to last, with every inch of squad depth considered, every player’s needs catered for and the blend of personality and culture considered too. There has been big money spent, especially on star names Kerr, Pernille Harder and Lauren James, but there have also been shrewd purchases. Reiten arrived for very little, while Erin Cuthbert was recruited from Scotland at just 18 and has now evolved into one of the best midfielders in the league.

It’s the long-term, sustained success in an era in which every club is investing and pushing that makes Chelsea so exceptional. The competition has only intensified during Hayes’ time at the club, with the latest addition being Manchester United, who took the title race to the final day this season. The pressure has forced Chelsea to reach new heights but also made everyone else drive up standards too.

The rocky patch Chelsea had in March when they lost the Continental Cup final to Arsenal and were beaten by Manchester City in the league — both in quite chaotic circumstances — showed a degree of fragility and was a sign that there is now jeopardy right across the WSL — for the title, Champions League spots and domestic trophies.

Hayes doesn’t entertain comparisons to Guardiola and his team’s dominance of the men’s game, saying that the Spaniard is “unbelievable” and she doesn’t even “stop and think about it”. But what she has thought about is living up to her mentor Akers, who coached her as a child and with whom she worked at Arsenal as assistant coach for many years. Hayes says she is chasing Akers’ 11 league titles.

“I think we’ve carried the spirit of that team to here,” she said after Saturday’s title win. “Vic coached me as a 10-year-old, he’s been in my life and sat with my dad at the (Women’s FA Cup final) last week. I know he’s Arsenal but he’s always been a champion for me and I said to him, ‘I’m coming for your record’ and he laughed. He was like, ‘You ain’t’ going to get it are you?’, and I said, ‘I am’.

“It’s a different time now, and he acknowledges that. It’s much harder to win and, when I’m sat with you lot in a pub when someone else is in my job in years to come, I’ll turn round and say: ‘Brilliant achievement’.”

(Top photo: Nigel French/PA Images via Getty Images)