Sonia Bompastor did not hide her frustration after Chelsea Women were held 1-1 by Everton at Stamford Bridge, a result that ended their winning run and let Manchester City back above them in the Women’s Super League.

Chelsea dominated the ball on Saturday afternoon but came away with a single point. Sandy Baltimore gave the hosts the lead after 28 minutes, only for Everton to equalise within five minutes when a cross from Yuka Momiki came off Lucy Bronze and beat Hannah Hampton. It was an unlucky moment for the England defender, who was making her 150th WSL appearance.

The draw brought an end to a run of seven straight league wins. Chelsea are still unbeaten in every competition this season, and the club pointed out that the unbeaten WSL sequence now stands at 17 matches.

“Not ruthless enough” in front of goal

Speaking after the game, Bompastor was blunt about where her side fell short. “The result is really frustrating for us,” she told the club’s official website. “Today the performance was not good enough for us to get a better result. We were probably too slow.”

The numbers backed up her view. Chelsea had 20 attempts, eight of them on target according to the head coach, yet Everton keeper Courtney Brosnan was beaten only once. “Even when we shot on target we were not clinical enough, not ruthless enough, and I don’t think we made Everton’s goalkeeper work hard enough,” Bompastor said.

Ellie Carpenter found the side netting and Wieke Kaptein saw an effort cleared off the line by Hannah Blundell, as West London Sport noted. Aggie Beever-Jones came on with 16 minutes left, but the visitors held firm.

Bompastor also wanted more without the ball. “We were not compact enough as a block. We didn’t recover enough balls in terms of the high press,” she explained. One positive was at the other end: Everton did not manage a single shot on target over the 90 minutes.

City go two points clear

The dropped points were costly. Manchester City thrashed West Ham 5-0, with Khadija Shaw scoring a hat-trick, and moved two points ahead of Chelsea at the top of the table.

The squad has been stretched in recent weeks. Last week we reported on Lauren James facing a hamstring assessment ahead of this run of fixtures, while five Chelsea players made the FIFPRO Women’s World 11 shortlist days earlier.

Quick turnaround before Häcken

There is little time to dwell on it. Chelsea travel to Sweden to face Häcken in the Women’s Champions League on Tuesday night, and Bompastor sees the short gap as a help rather than a hindrance.

“It’s good for us when we are doing well not to go too high and when we have a frustrating result, not to go too low,” she said. “For me, it’s best when you have a frustrating result to play quickly straight afterwards. So the quick turnaround is actually a positive thing.”

She also insisted the squad remains in good shape overall. “I believe this team has a lot of quality, and we can do better than what we did today,” Bompastor added.