Gareth Taylor has spent a good deal of his coaching career trying to cling to the coattails of Emma Hayes. Perhaps this was why Manchester City’s 1-0 defeat of Chelsea, erasing the champions’ three-point lead in the Women’s Super League, felt like such a watershed. “It’s a big step for us,” Taylor said. “In the past we’ve been a bit soft defensively in these moments. I knew the margins were going to be tight. But confidence was high.”

Khadija Shaw’s early goal proved the decisive strike, but Taylor reserved his richest praise for a defence that has still conceded only eight goals all season and held off Chelsea in a stirring second-half rearguard. “We’ve added a bit of steeliness to our defending, we’ve worked on our set pieces a lot, and the spirit in the club is very good,” Taylor said. “Sometimes it’s hard for players to play the game and not the occasion.”

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It was City’s first win at Kingsmeadow since 2016. “They made it a bit of a fortress. We’ve broken that record now and we deserved it,” he said. “We played some good stuff in the first half, and in the latter stages it was a really good show of defending from the entire team.”

Hayes, for her part, was in little mood to mourn her proud three-year unbeaten home league record in Kingston. “I don’t think people will be putting it on my tombstone,” she scoffed. “Look, we all know it’s a game of tight margins. We should have had a penalty first half, but these things happen. Second half we dominated, but it was a low xG [expected goals] until the last 10 minutes of the game. Their big xG chance came off the goal. A draw would have been a fair result. But they took their chances.”

Nor was Hayes particularly bothered in the winnowing gap at the top of the able. “I just focus on the performance,” she said. “Preparation, performance, recovery. I don’t spend time looking up or down the league. It’s a waste of time. I just know we’ve dropped three points.”