**Chelsea do not get beaten 5-1 very often, and when it happens, it tends to feel like a crack in the wall rather than a bad afternoon.**
[Manchester City’s demolition at the Etihad](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/cy0525zpxekt) was not just a scoreline, it was a dissection, and it arrived on the back of a 2-0 defeat to Arsenal that already had alarm bells ringing. Two losses in isolation do not define a season, but the way Chelsea have lost these games tells you something uncomfortable, this team currently looks like it is trying to solve problems with systems rather than conviction.
City were excellent, of course they were. Kerolin played with that rare kind of confidence that turns defenders into spectators, and the press from City, with runners going beyond and midfielders hunting second balls, made Chelsea look a beat slow everywhere. But Chelsea’s issues ran deeper than being outplayed by a better side on the day. They looked passive without the ball, disorganised when they tried to press, and strangely fragile once their first line was beaten. That matters because the blueprint is now obvious, if you move the ball quickly through Chelsea’s first pressure, there is space to attack, and the recovery is not sharp enough to close it.
The set piece element is the part that should really worry them. Set pieces are about preparation, repetition, and collective responsibility. Chelsea have looked chaotic defending dead balls for weeks, and against City it was brutal, poor reactions, poor marking, and too many moments where players seemed to be waiting for somebody else to take charge.
This is where the conversation moves away from tactics and into leadership. Chelsea have experience across the pitch, but experience is not the same as control, and right now they are not controlling moments.
Sonia Bompastor has taken heat, and some of it is fair. Chelsea have toggled between a back three and a back four, and at the moment neither looks settled. That kind of flexibility can be a strength when it is built on a stable base, but it becomes a problem when it looks like a search for comfort.
Selection has also raised eyebrows, particularly in how Chelsea have set up their forward line, and in games of this magnitude you cannot afford to spend 20 minutes learning what is not working.
Still, it would be lazy to pin this on the coach alone. There are individual performances that have dipped, and there have been basic errors in build up that [Chelsea](https://thedeck.news/chelsea-women-transfer-target-refuses-to-sign-new-contract/) rarely made under Emma Hayes. Millie Bright’s long passing, once a pressure release valve, has not been consistent, and when Chelsea cannot go long with purpose, they end up forced into riskier short options. Add the transition vulnerability, and you have a team that is inviting stress, then panicking under it. It becomes a loop.
The most revealing moment may have come after the final whistle, when Bompastor publicly entertained the idea that if people at the club think she is not the right person, she would be happy to go. That is not the language of someone hiding, it is the language of someone feeling the temperature. She also hinted she would have liked to be in a better place after the last transfer window. Again, that is not a meltdown, but it is a flare, and it speaks to a club learning what life looks like after a decade of Hayes having total authority.
That is the real backdrop here. Chelsea are not simply trying to win football matches; they are trying to redefine who makes decisions, how the squad evolves, and how a serial winning culture survives a managerial handover. The women’s team has been the one stable pillar at the club for years. When that pillar wobbles, even slightly, the noise gets louder because nobody is used to seeing it.
So, are Chelsea in crisis? Not in the tabloid sense, not yet. The league title looks gone, but it had already started to drift beyond reach before City put the exclamation mark on it. The season is now about cups and, crucially, the Champions League. Chelsea can still rescue the narrative with a deep European run, and that is where judgment will be made. But there is a real crisis of identity happening on the pitch, and it shows up in intensity, in cohesion, and in the absence of a calm hand during storms.
Chelsea do not need panic. They need clarity. Pick the structure that best suits the personnel, simplify responsibilities, restore aggression without the ball, and rebuild trust in the basics. If they cannot do that quickly, then the crisis becomes real, because the danger is not just losing games, it is losing the aura that used to win them before they even kicked off.