Emma Hayes blasts Chelsea stars after Arsenal thrashing - "Us at our very worst"
Emma Hayes said her Chelsea team were “at their very worst” during their 4-1 defeat at Arsenal.
The Blues were thrashed in front of a record WSL crowd of 59,042, with Alessia Russo scoring twice for the hosts. The excellent Beth Mead and Amanda Ilestedt also were on target as Arsenal moved level on points with Hayes' side, who were unbeaten going into the game.
It was an off day for the title holders, who bar a nice first-half equaliser from Johanna Rytting-Kaneryd, struggled to compete. And Hayes pulled no punches in her post-match press conference.
"That’s as bad as I’ve seen us for a long time," she said. "The better team won by a country mile.
"All phases of our play were poor. They bullied us. That is not us at our best today. That is us at our very worst.
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"You have to get beaten, you can’t go a whole season unbeaten, there’s lots of top teams. But what you cannot do is give away three goals before the half and then give a mindless fourth. You’re giving it up."
Hayes cut a frustrated figure on the touchline throughout the first-half, constantly barking instructions at Jess Carter and Niamh Charles, who were totally overrun by Beth Mead and Katie McCabe. And they never really looked like getting back into the game after half-time, with Lauren James unusually quiet.
James was eventually hooked after she was lucky to escape a red card for a bad challenge on Lia Walti. And within minutes Arsenal had the game wrapped up when Russo was brought down by Berger, giving the England forward the chance from spot.
She duly converted to complete a famous win. But despite Arsenal's biggest result of the season, manager Jonas Eidevall refused to get carried away.
"It’s our strongest performance so far this season," he said. "But in football if you want to win things you have to be consistent with the performance.
"It’s great that we have a high, that becomes our baseline, our standard. This is always the hard thing in football, now we have to recover and refresh mentally, physically. We need to be ready on Wednesday (a Conti Cup tie with Tottenham)
"What’s telling for me when you see the reaction is yes, we are happy today but at the end of the day, it’s our finishing position in the league is what’s going to matter."
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