Chelsea Women: Sonia Bompastor has hit the ground running with an incredible unbeaten run, but there’s surely more to come | football news

“When we talk about ambitions, we have to turn words into actions,” said a frustrated Sonia Bompastor after Chelsea dropped their first points of the season at Leicester. “I need my players to be ready from the start of every game.”

The demands at the highest level are brutal, but Chelsea never get there by luck or chance. Bompastor has willingly accepted the ‘task manager’ baton passed to him by Emma Hayes, who left in the summer, and has run with it, impressively quickly.

Under the Frenchman’s reign, Chelsea have built a six-point lead at the top of the Women’s Super League, progressed to the knockout stages of the Champions League with a 100 per cent record and averaged 2.8 goals for 90 in all competitions.

They have been practically unstoppable. But the trip to the King Power provided a timely reminder that despite the provocation, the WSL remains fiercely contested and no team is infallible.

Bompastor lamented the lack of intensityintent and efficiency as Chelsea held on for a 1-1 draw, despite having 82 touches in the Leicester box and registering 28 shots on target. The expectation is to win, and anything less is ultimately a disappointment.

Still, to have reached the halfway point of the season with 15 wins and a draw in 16 games is quite remarkable. And while, on paper, that feat looks easy with the WSL’s best-assembled team (and biggest budget), things are rarely that simple.

Once impregnable dynasties can fall – take The implosion of Manchester City under the great Pep Guardiola as evidence, but this empire, at least at this point, is not about to be broken.

The ideas are fresh, with a new identity as Bompastor tries to turn Chelsea into a team that wins with flair and a style of possession over power. She wants the same winning machine that Hayes built, just with a little French refinement, or as she would put it, je ne sais quoi.

Speaking after Chelsea beat Celtic in November to secure European progression with two games to spare, Bompastor said: “It’s important to work hard so things can be easy, even if they aren’t.”

Simplicity is hard to come by in football. Some teams have a habit of making results look effortless (Chelsea are in that category), but the process of getting there is often harder than it looks. So what are Bompastor’s real points of difference?

“You never turn your brain off. It’s 24/7,” he said. Sky Sports before beating title rivals Man City in November. And this obsession with what she calls the “perfect game model” is what keeps pushing standards to different levels.

He arrived with respect for Chelsea’s pre-existing culture and trophy-laden history, but Hayes’ brand of football would never marry with a ball-playing midfielder who favored a high-tempo game that thrills and excites. Bompastor has struck the perfect balance between consistency and change to ensure players’ confidence in their philosophy.

“She demands a lot from us,” Guro Reiten said recently. “There are things in practice and the way she wants us to play is a little different, but so far it’s worked out well. Whatever Sonia wants me to do, I’ll do it.”

Without the luxury of injured pair Sam Kerr and Lauren James, Chelsea’s most prolific duo in recent campaigns, Bompastor has had to rely on Reiten to deliver. But this is where his eye for detail and softer style (Hayes was usually hard) has fostered a healthy team-led approach.

Kerr and James are Mavericks – Hayes loved it. They are unpredictable and individualistic. Now Chelsea have others capable of carrying that mantle, except it feels a little more united. Thirty-one goals – at least 10 more than any other team – scored by 14 different players. No other team in the division has even reached double figures for different goalscorers (Brighton are the closest with nine).

Reiten has been a big beneficiary, hidden to operate more centrally, scoring six times in 10 WSL starts. But she is not the only one. Johanna Rytting Kaneryd is having the season of her life, Mayra Ramirez has scored big goals in big games (against Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City), while youngster Aggie Beever-Jones has the second best minutes-to-goal ratio of the league .

Now for the refinement part. How does Bompastor take such a talented group and transform them into pass masters? Chelsea’s distribution stats are the least flattering dynamic of their game. They average fewer passes per 90 than Man City, Arsenal and Brighton, and their share of possession in 10 WSL games (57%) is much lower than Bompastor would like, as is their passing accuracy.

Most of the great football dynasties combined the will to win with the surprise factor. Hayes’ Chelsea used mentality as their superpower.

yes Bompastor is able to instill his core tenets of high possession dominance en route to silverware this season, his relentless pursuit of perfection may be closer than he thinks.