Manchester United's Struggles Amid Chelsea's Dominance and Stanway's Arsenal Impact
Manchester United were meant to be building on a landmark year. A first major trophy in 2024. A maiden Champions League campaign that stretched into the quarter-finals. Under Marc Skinner, the trajectory looked clear: upward, steady, ambitious.
That feels a long time ago.
Skinner has gone. United sit bottom of the Women's Super League, carrying a worse goal difference than newly promoted Charlton. Six league games without a win, their longest barren run since the club re-formed in 2018. Years of careful construction now look like the ruins of a project abruptly abandoned.
The start to Eva Olid’s tenure has been brutal. Two games, two heavy blows, and a 5-0 dismantling by Chelsea that exposed every soft spot this squad has tried to hide. Pressure has arrived early and without mercy.
It is not her mess alone. Olid has inherited a squad stripped of momentum and short on belief. The problems stretch back months, not weeks. After the hammering at Kingsmeadow, she spoke of her frustration at the body language: heads down, shoulders slumped. Her message was simple enough – heads up, keep going – but the images on the pitch told a more troubling story.
She is entitled to ask what kind of backing she has really walked into. For a while now, United’s hesitancy around their women’s programme has mirrored the team’s own nervousness on the ball. The club’s pivot towards youth this summer, a cheaper model built around development rather than established signings, was framed as a strategic reset. It also helped push Skinner out the door, even if the parting was dressed up as mutual.
He had wanted more tools. He did not get them.
Olid now has to work with the consequences. Across their opening two league games, United have taken so few shots that they have equalled the record for the lowest total by a non-newly promoted side at this stage, matching Leicester last season. Leicester went down.
Adaptation under a new manager always takes time. But the scale of United’s issues goes beyond teething problems. They have never beaten Chelsea in the WSL – 14 attempts, 14 failures – so defeat on Sunday was no shock. The manner of it was.
United do not usually get torn apart by five. Under Skinner, whatever his limitations, there was a platform, a structure, a sense of being hard to roll over. That has gone missing. The foundation that once felt solid now looks cracked, fragile, exposed.
Next up: Arsenal, live on Sky Sports. Another heavyweight, another examination, with so many areas in need of urgent repair that it is hard to know which fire to put out first. Shape? Confidence? Cutting edge? All of the above.
Olid cannot allow this to slide any further. The descent has to stop somewhere.
James the reluctant No 9 – or Chelsea’s ultimate insurance policy?
On the other side of that 5-0, Chelsea looked like a team stung by criticism and intent on answering it in the most ruthless way possible. After failing to finish off Aston Villa in a 1-1 draw on the opening weekend, questions were asked about Sonia Bompastor’s new era and whether the sharp edges of the Emma Hayes years might blunt.
They did not look blunt here. They looked vicious.
Chelsea found a wounded opponent and showed no mercy. Bompastor spoke about respect being expressed in goals – if you can hurt a team, you do it fully. Her players listened. This was the strong preying on the weak, a stark reminder of the gulf that still exists between the league’s elite and those trying desperately to cling to their coat-tails.
At the heart of it, again, stood Lauren James. Chelsea’s cheat code. Their chaos and their calm.
She operated centrally, drifting, dictating, snapping into life whenever the ball reached her feet. Around her, the supporting cast finally matched her level. The game ran through Keira Walsh, who knitted moves together with assurance. Sjoeke Nusken and Wieke Kaptein imposed themselves in the duels, refusing to let United breathe.
Out wide, full-backs Katie McCabe and Ellie Carpenter drove high and wide, stretching the pitch, forcing United’s back line to fan out and leaving the central lanes open for James to exploit. From deeper, Lucy Bronze stepped out from centre-back and clipped passes into advanced areas, turning defence into attack in a couple of strides.
James made it all stick. She has already racked up 19 shots in two games – more than anyone else in the division – and looks increasingly comfortable as a false 9 when required. It is not her only role, but it might be Chelsea’s most powerful emergency plan when injuries or form rob them of a traditional striker.
Bompastor will know she cannot lean on that option every week. Use it too often and opponents will adjust. Use it wisely and it becomes a get-out-of-jail card no other side possesses.
The schedule will test that balance quickly. Arsenal are on the horizon. Lyon in the Champions League follow. Neither will be as compliant as United. This was a statement win, but the real examination of Bompastor’s Chelsea is only just beginning.
Stanway’s new dimension lifts Arsenal
Away from the chaos at Kingsmeadow, one quieter story is beginning to shape the top of the table. Georgia Stanway is back in the WSL, and she has not returned as the same player who left for Bayern Munich in 2022.
Her passing has sharpened, expanded, matured. For England, that development has been visible for some time, but the early weeks of the domestic season have underlined just how much her range has grown.
On her Arsenal debut she completed 98 passes. Across the first two rounds of fixtures, only Liverpool centre-back Grace Fisk has completed more than Stanway’s 194. Of those, 91 have gone into the final third – comfortably the highest figure in the league.
That kind of precision changes the geometry of Arsenal’s attack. It means the burden of central creativity no longer rests almost entirely on Mariona Caldentey. Stanway can now punch holes herself, threading lines between the opposition midfield and defence, dragging markers out of position and inviting runners to break in behind.
Against Crystal Palace, she created four chances, more than enough for a side of Arsenal’s quality to have forced a breakthrough. Alessia Russo was unusually profligate with those opportunities, the finishing touch missing from an otherwise well-constructed performance.
But if Stanway keeps supplying at this rate, Arsenal will not stay wasteful for long. The passes are there. The platform is there. The question is whether, in a season that already feels unforgiving at both ends of the table, United can arrest their fall while Chelsea and Arsenal refine the tools that might yet decide the title.
