Arsenal win triggers another Chelsea meltdown

Arsenal’s latest European win was followed by fresh complaints from Sonia Bompastor, with the Chelsea manager again shifting attention away from the result.

Sonia Bompastor spent the aftermath of Chelsea’s Champions League exit complaining about Arsenal once again, and while she was entitled to feel aggrieved by one major decision, the wider tone of the reaction still said more about Chelsea’s frustration than it did about the match.

The incident in question was the late clash between Katie McCabe and Alyssa Thompson, which ended with Bompastor being sent off and then carrying her anger into the post-match interviews. On that point alone, there is little real argument. McCabe pulled Thompson back by the hair and should have been sent off. It came too late to change the outcome, but it was still a red-card offence and there was every reason for Chelsea to be angry that it was missed.

What jars is the selective outrage that has followed. Across the tie, there were other incidents that might have warranted similar scrutiny, yet they have attracted next to none.

Kadeisha Buchanan’s straight-legged challenge on Anneke Borbe last week has barely featured in the discussion.

Nor has there been much appetite to revisit Lauren James stamping on McCabe, or the suggestion that she could have gone the week before for two bookable offences.

Instead, one late Arsenal incident has come to dominate the coverage, as though nothing else of note happened across 180 minutes.

That has suited Bompastor, who has now made a habit of turning Arsenal matches into refereeing arguments. Last week she was calling for men to come and save the women’s game. This week she turned up to her BBC interview with her phone in hand and footage of the McCabe incident ready to go. “Why do we have VAR?” she asked.

She added: “Everyone needs to understand, that’s the difference between being qualified and not being qualified. It has a big impact on players.”

That claim was overstated. The decision was poor, but to suggest it was the difference between qualification and elimination is difficult to sustain when the incident came so late and had no bearing on the final outcome.

Chelsea had already failed to do enough in the tie itself.

McCabe, for her part, addressed the incident on Instagram, writing: “I just want to clarify that I was genuinely reaching for the shirt, I wouldn’t ever want to pull someone’s hair. Full respect to Thompson.”

Whether accidental or not, it should still have been punished, but that is rather different from the deliberate malice Bompastor was keen to imply. “She [Thompson] was crying. She’s trying her best on the pitch in both games and it is not good enough, when you are playing football and someone pulls your hair, it’s bad. She was crying and emotional with the situation and the result.”

The more revealing part of all this was the media response around it. Rather than focussing at all on Arsenal reaching another Champions League semi-final, and doing so as the only English club ever to have won the competition, much of the attention drifted towards Chelsea grievance once again.

The Times focused on “Another failed season for English women’s football’s dominant force”. Another led with Bompastor’s latest criticism of officiating.

The Telegraph report even claimed “The game itself consisted of an uneventful 90 minutes”.

That description is absurd. The match produced 38 shots, eight big chances, nine corners, 45 tackles, 18 interceptions, 58 clearances and eight goalkeeper saves. Uneventful it was not.

It was simply a game many seemed determined to discuss through the prism of Chelsea’s complaints rather than Arsenal’s achievement.

The same applied to the predictable nonsense about Arsenal’s so-called “dark arts” as they wound down the clock in the corner, as though seeing out a major European tie in the closing stages is somehow suspect.

Daphne van Domselaar was warned for time-wasting after 90 seconds of the game starting, despite having had the ball for only a matter of seconds.

Arsenal were treated as though managing a game professionally was something faintly underhand, while Chelsea were, once again, indulged in defeat.

So yes, Bompastor had a legitimate complaint about the McCabe red card that should have been shown. Beyond that, though, the broader picture was boringly familiar.

Arsenal won the tie, Arsenal reached the semi-finals, and yet too much of the noise afterwards was about Chelsea’s sense of injustice.

For a manager who has now made a habit of taking aim at Arsenal and the officials, it felt less like measured criticism and more like another bout of sour grapes after being knocked out – from Bompastor and large sections of the media.