Money moans or how I learned to stop whining and love WoSo investment

The serious and satire behind WoSo spending

Two articles in a week? I must be mad about something.

On a more serious note, I’ve decided to split this article into two parts. If you like my sense of humour and also more importantly can take a joke even if you don’t support Chelsea FC Women, read them both.

If you are probably going to be offended by me taking a dig at your club (lovingly) then you can skip down past the first section.

If you support Chelsea FC Women and like getting payback, read both. If you support Chelsea FC Women and just want the serious stuff, then skip the first section.

In fact, I’ll even put a hyperlink in for you to jump to it and give you a poll to break it up.

Skip the criticism and take me to Rob being serious…

There was an original comment in this piece that although designed as satire was stupid, ill-mannered and offensive. I profusely apologise to anyone who saw it. It has been removed and I will endeavour to do much better.

Now we’re all aligned, time for me to have a moan. One of the most stupid arguments I have seen about Chelsea FC Women’s success is that apparently by investing, we have ruined the competition within the league and we should stop investing as a result.

Just consider that statement for a minute. Now apply it to any other industry or business. Do you think Coca Cola are suddenly going to think ‘Bloody hell, we’re dominating our market. Better stop advertising so Cola Now and their contemporaries can all gain market share and catch us up’? Or from a men’s football POV, can you even imagine someone suggesting that PSG should stop investing and dominating French football because Marseille fans, or Lyon fans or whoever are upset? You’d be laughed at and rightly so.

For some reason, WoSo seems to have taken a holier-than-thou approach. Every single current club in the WSL in 2024-25 was attached to a club in the Premier League. The Premier League is amongst other things, the most obnoxious, cash rich gravy train of money ever to exist. It’s basically the sport equivalent of Monopoly but every season you survive, instead of collecting £200, the banker hands you circa 100 million. Not to mention that the sublicensing of TV rights, commercial sponsors and all that jazz itself yields tens, if not hundreds of millions for every single club in the game.

Every single one of these clubs also owns their women’s team. Unless I’ve missed something in the FA rulebook, there is absolutely nothing that stops every other side investing. It isn’t as if some commandment exists: ‘Thou shalt only spend if your name is Chelsea’. Perhaps you all should place your anger somewhere better, like towards your own club.

Let’s start with Arsenal. They’ve been historic pioneers in the women’s game and rightly should be applauded for that. One of the reasons they could remain so dominant was the ability to pay full time salaries and also the ability to poach all the best talents from other sides. Stop me if this sounds familiar, but isn’t this exactly what you are having a go at Chelsea for doing? Just because you did it first doesn’t suddenly give you some right to pull the ladder up. And then, if you had such a head start on every other team, isn’t it kind of concerning that Chelsea have now managed to make such headway so quickly? Arsenal aren’t exactly skint themselves. Instead of, I don’t know, spending money fielding a team of fullbacks, they could have given those wages to the women’s team. That way, you could have had Russo, Miedema and Caldentey all playing in the same side, which admittedly would be a treat to watch.

Now time to deal with United fans who complain about it. Firstly, the fact your club only has a women’s team now is because they saw a money-making opportunity. There is a reason a number of players who support Manchester United ended up elsewhere in the past 15 years because you simply couldn’t be bothered to have a set-up. I appreciate times have been tough recently with Brexit Jim slashing the budget at every opportunity, and you’re still probably paying off Polly Bancroft. Even Rachel Williams has seen her pension cut. Rather than moan about what Chelsea do, I’d be more concerned about the fact Jim Ratcliffe couldn’t even identify your captain when he visited the training ground. When you also factor in recent spending hasn’t exactly been wise - a certain record signing Brazilian is currently out on loan to testify to this- you don’t really have a leg to stand on.

And also being fair, it isn’t the entire fanbase of those sides that does. Some of the fans are extremely nuanced and understand Chelsea showing commitment to their women’s side through regular and notable investment doesn’t just mean ‘Rahhh Chelsea bad’.

(Adam, Tim, Barry, Conner, Charlotte, know this paragraph is mainly aimed at you wonderful people and our fantastic debates and discussions)

Although those 2 fanbases are the biggest culprits for this hypocrisy and complaining, they aren’t the only fanbases that whine about it.

Everyone knows the ‘Blue Cartel’ look after each other and to be honest it’s rare to see a Manchester City fan complaining about spending and monetary decisions in the women’s game. The amount we’ve played each other this season, Chelsea may as well have just rented a house near Etihad Campus and City borrowed a penthouse on King’s Road. But for any of them out there who do want to seethe and moan about it, just remember your club spent several seasons paying Gareth Taylor’s wage and if you can name me a bigger waste of resources than that, I’ll be impressed.

Liverpool sadly are one of the sides that had a fantastic women’s structure historically and simply let it die because FSG didn’t see any value in it. They deserve credit for fighting their way back up and I have to commend the fact they still, in whatever form or under whatever manager, contrive to lose every single Merseyside derby, no matter when or where it is played. Their commitment to ensuring Everton fans at least get to celebrating beating their local rivals in the women’s game, if not in the men’s game is inspiring.

Tottenham Hotspur. Well. your brilliant financial acumen has seen you make a player with less goals and assists this season than Lucy Bronze one of your top earners. At the same time, you’ve also loaned out a goalkeeper to Chelsea solely so she can collect more trophies in two months than your club have managed. At least being Spursy is a club-wide ethos.

I can actually sympathise with Everton and West Ham United because they both have suffered under ownerships that have 0 interest in running the women’s team well on any level, and hopefully this will change. The fact West Ham also do frequently allow Chelsea to dish out a drubbing on them does chequer my view. Leicester City also fall into a similar bucket, although admittedly although their on-pitch investment is usually pretty smart, they definitely fail the grade when it comes to off-pitch safeguarding…

Aston Villa get off lightly. They are actually showing commitment to their women’s team, they just haven’t necessarily done it very well this season. That said, they did indirectly help us win the league in Matchday 20, so again, Millie Bright’s bestie and co can have a pass mark.

Brighton have Fran Kirby playing for them, and as much as men’s fans may want to throw darts at that bloody seagull crest every time they see it, Kirby’s omnipresence and omnipotence means that unfortunately, you have to respect them. (Besides Nikita Parris, who could be flown to Timbuktu 20 minutes before kick off and still find herself at the backpost from 3 yards out to score against Chelsea at some point during the match).

I’ll finish off on Crystal Palace, the club which the clip in question suggested was a model that other clubs could learn from. There was no reason given why they should be a model but it seemed to just be a nice way to have a dig at Chelsea. Palace spent a fair amount to get out the Champi…Name Redacted… Did You Mean: WSL 2 but that isn’t even the point.

Crystal Palace have been relegated. Relegation is bad. If any team is aspiring to be relegated, they should probably change their view. I don’t blame Palace in particular for being relegated or indeed for investing to get promoted, coming up from the Women’s Cha - oh sorry, Nikki Doucet’s assistant is glaring at me again - I mean WSL2, what a fantastic wonderful brilliant original name - is difficult.

That said, Palace’s investment decisions to stay up were baffling and instead of going for proven WSL experience, they signed a smorgasbord of questionable potential and average at best squad players from across Europe and America, which did not help them at all. I’m still not sure why My Cato is one of the highest fees in Women’s football history.She cost Crystal Palace the equivalent of 5 Sjoeke Nüskens and I reckon the latter would be the GOAT 5-a-side team.

Now time for serious Rob to take over again and actually provide some quality content rather than just a lot of payback.

Massive Money Moans in Women’s Football

Welcome to our passengers who have just joined us.

I think it’s important to have a serious and nuanced discussion about spending in women’s football. Too often it gets boiled down into the topic of spending on transfers, and whilst this is a huge part of it from a fan point of view, the total outlay and expenditure of a club is much more wide reaching.

The 2022 Euros triumph was meant to be a watershed moment where women’s football finally would get the respect and the backing it deserved to help elevate it to the status of elite sport. With the Lionesses set to defend their title this summer, it does feel in some areas that we haven’t really progressed at all. From a spending point of view, teams are massively reluctant to invest properly in their women’s team, especially from an infrastructure point of view. They are viewed as a cost burden and resultantly given very little resources.

This is especially true in the middle-to-bottom part of the WSL and whilst one or two teams are looking to invest and bridge the gap, the fact is it risks becoming an uncrossable trench for teams to surmount. It’s not going to be healthy in a 12-team-league if the same 4 sides are switching places, creaming off the highest amounts of money and then consequently just doing the same dance every single season. You’ll see another piece soon regarding my thoughts on the rebrand, but the fact is, as incredible as Chelsea going unbeaten was, it was terrible optics for a league which tries to market itself as being immensely competitive. It risks becoming a closed shop. Perhaps you can argue it’s already there. Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United all struggled at various points in the last season and yet there was never any real jeopardy of them not making up the top four.

On the flipside, because teams don’t invest and most just look to tread water, it does result in the inevitability that if a club has a top young prospect, they will retain them for one or two seasons before the big names start sniffing around and poach them. Due to the volatility of contracts in the women’s game, ‘free’ transfers are much more common and so consequently teams also risk losing out on transfer fees, which if nothing else could actually be re-invested into the eco-system. Is this necessarily going to create a more competitive league. No. Will it make more clubs more sustainable which solidifies them for future growth? Absolutely.

If there was a minimal requirement to invest a certain amount over the season, it would be fascinating to see which teams actually bothered to hit the requirement. Most would rather risk a punitive fine, which is genuinely sad. I do think if the league as a whole showed more willingness and commitment to invest that they would actually hold more power when it comes to making big decisions. Look at the Premier League for the best case in point - Richard Masters is little more than a figurehead because the Chief Executives of every club run the show. I’m not endorsing this exact situation, I think that has it’s own problems. That said, I do think if clubs were more willing to invest in the overall makeup of the league, you could swiftly resolve issues like player safeguarding concerns, concerns over costs of treatment for injuries and also research into preventing these injuries and also improving the quality of officiating and availability of technology.

This is an area of investment that I think people forget Chelsea have ploughed a lot of money into. They have transformed and upgraded their medical department, hired specialists that specifically understand female athletes and footballers and tailored every aspect of their approach - nutrition, training schedules, rest, recovery, mentality - towards female athletes. It shouldn’t be a question whether an elite athlete can get proper high quality treatment for their injury and more importantly the right rehabilitation for it too. I find it somewhat jarring that some clubs are quite happy to roll the dice when it comes to women’s injuries, but the male players are being flown across the world to see private specialists when it is suspected they might have stubbed their big toe.

Training facilities is another area where clubs owned by Premier League or Championship clubs simply have no excuse. They can afford multi-million pound complexes, the women’s team should not just be left with off-cuts. Again, one of the big acid tests for me is how much improvement would teams do to their training facilities, if they were told they had to spend an equal amount on the women’s facilities too? The cynic in me suggests you wouldn’t see the grand opening of quite so many state-of-the-art complexes.

None of these infrastructure changes has anything to do with transferring players in or out, but I guarantee you this elite infrastructure makes a difference. If you haven’t seen the Chelsea FC Women documentary yet,(featuring the legendary, late and much missed Paul Lagan) I advise you to do so. Listen to the way Emma Hayes talks about investment and about how it should raise the attitude of a whole club. Look at how she designed and tailored everything and was backed to do it. That is sensible investment and that is how you found a dynasty.

Do transfers play a part? Absolutely, and I am not going to pretend people don’t want to join Chelsea. At the moment, besides an offer from FC Barcelona, or perhaps Lyon, Chelsea is the place to be. There is a reason why players are willing to come and battle for gametime, because they know it leads to trophies in most cases. However, what they also know is this is a club and a culture that values Chelsea FC Women extremely highly and thus will continue investing to keep them at the very top level.

This has involved breaking the global transfer record multiple times in the past five years… but when you factor in that the current women’s football record is one-quarter of what Chelsea Men paid to sign Ishe Samuels-Smith (no offence to him as he is quality too) but it does aptly demonstrate the disparity you are dealing with. Chelsea were able to sign the world’s best young centre-back in January for $1 million. I imagine you’re talking closer to $150 million for the equivalent in the men’s game. It’s definitely not healthy for the two to be carbon copies of each other.

That just proves the original point. There is absolutely 0 reason why every side in the WSL which is owned by a Premier League or Championship counterpart couldn’t commit several hundred thousand pounds to sign a player to really elevate them, or to allow them to pay the wages of a top player. Look at how well Fran Kirby is thriving and inspiring Brighton. How effective Olivia Smith and Shekiera Martinez have been for Liverpool and West Ham. It doesn’t have to be huge sums, it just has to be smart, consistent quality investment. I could at least understand a fanbase like Durham complaining about investment as they don’t have the comfortable Premier League nest to feather them if required.

I’ll finish by saying I respect the rival fans who have chosen to not just take the easy option to snipe and snide about Chelsea’s commitment to invest. Instead, they’ve chosen the much harder option to actually challenge their own club’s commitment to their women’s team and pushed for them to show more support for them both on and off the pitch. Money in women’s football is growing in every sense and the train will soon leave the station.

Taking the conscious decision right now to not invest means you are risking alienating a lot of potential growth, fans and excitement in the future.

Rob Pratley