Tomorrow, Chelsea begin life in the Women’s Super League without their talismanic striker Sam Kerr, sidelined for the rest of the season after surgery on an anterior cruciate ligament injury.
Kerr has scored 99 goals in 128 appearances since she first appeared for Chelsea in 2020. She has been the club’s top goalscorer in each of the past three seasons and has been particularly prolific against this weekend’s opponents Manchester United, scoring eight times against them including the only goal in their last league meeting in March and last season’s Women’s FA Cup final.
With the January transfer window still open, Hayes didn’t rule out the possibility of recruiting an extra player to compensate for the loss of Kerr. However, with Hayes due to vacate her position at the end of the season to become the new head coach of the United States Women’s National Team, she admitted “those decisions aren’t made by me.”
She instead preferred to focus on finding a solution from within and juggling her forward line to find an alternative to play in the number nine position at the apex of the team’s attack. During last week’s Women’s FA Cup match against West Ham, not until the introduction of substitute Mia Fischel as central striker did Chelsea find a way to goal, eventually coming from behind to win after extra time.
Then, she had started with England forward Lauren James, named this week in the FIFPro women’s World XI, as her number nine. When Fischel came on – scoring within eleven minutes – James dropped back into her more familiar deep-lying role. She was eventually replaced by 20-year-old Aggie Beever-Jones who proceeded to score her seventh goal of the season.
Hayes believes all of the three have the potential to replace Kerr up front. “Lauren has a great goal threat and has the ability to do that. But it’s important we’re able to stretch beyond her if she plays that role. Both Mia and Lauren, and even Aggie, will all play their role in the number nine position.”
“Lauren dropped into the number 10 role in the second half and she was instrumental in our performance. But when you lose a player like Sam Kerr you have to find other ways and sometimes you have to do that in the game to see what works. We had the luxury to play Lauren in the first half in that position and Mia in the second half and that was enough for us to get the result. Going forward, those three players will be considered for that position.”
Another option for Hayes, is the returning Catarina Macario. Out for over eighteen months after suffering her own ACL injury, Macario has been utilised by her previous club Olympique Lyonnais as both a creative midfielder and an outright forward.
However, Hayes told me that Macario remains some way short of being considered for any position in her starting line-up. “we’ve had her available since the beginning of (the January training camp in) Morocco in a team environment, gradually building her in. She’s barely at a non-contact stage with the team yet. She’s still building her way back.”
“But for sure, she’s somewhere between the nine and the 10 position, and maybe because of Sam, that will become a consideration for us when she’s available for the team. But she’s not at this moment in time. So I don’t spend too much time thinking about it.”
Beever-Jones had outscored Kerr in the league so far this season with five goals from just seven appearances. Beever-Jones has started only one of those games and is therefore averaging a goal every 33 minutes, by far the best strike-rate in the league this season.
“I think it’s fair to say she’s played that role very well.” said Hayes. “She has come in from the bench, is a goal threat and has built her way into the team. She’s gaining everything on merit. She pushes every day to be where she is. Having one year’s experience in the league at Everton, versus having the experience of a Chelsea player like Guro Reiten for example – there’s still a gap in terms of consistency and that’s to be expected.”
“I think Aggie will play a pivotal role for us in the second half of the season. She is a goal threat. Every time she gets into a great area and she always gets a goal scoring opportunity. For those reasons she will always knock on the door to play and she will get opportunities. But equally, you win a game over 90 minutes and I think the role she has with teams who are a little more stretched out, has more space, is when she comes to life. Chelsea play a lot of teams with a low block and I think that’s a different type of game and requires different skillsets. That, for me, is the next step for where she needs to develop. But I think she will be critical.”