Blues leave Arsenal needing to pull up their socks in title race

Chelsea's Women's Super League clash with Arsenal was delayed by 30 minutes because of a clash of socks.

The Gunners arrived at Stamford Bridge with the same colour white socks as the hosts, causing referee Rebecca Welch to push kick-off back until a solution was found.

Arsenal ended up wearing black socks from Chelsea's megastore to enable the match to go ahead, with blue tape used in a makeshift attempt to hide the lion and Nike logos.

Jonas Eidevall's side went on to lose 3-1, dealing a huge blow to their title hopes.

The Arsenal boss, 41, admitted the mix-up did not help his side after a Lauren James goal and two from Sjoeke Nusken gave Chelsea a 3-0 half-time lead.

He told Sky Sports: "I only knew it was a clash of colours with the kits and it needed to be resolved.

"Why that was I have no idea, that's not what I spend my time and energy on.

"We had to deal with it from a mental and a physical perspective, how we can warm up again. When you're ready to go out and play then you have to reset.

"Of course, we try to have strategies but we were slow in our start."

As the scheduled kick-off time of 7pm approached, a crowd of more than 30,000 were treated to loud music as the atmosphere continued to build.

Arsenal legend Ian Wright, a keen supporter of the women's game, posted on social media site X: "Embarrassing this. Ridiculous."

Former England international Izzy Christiansen claimed the delayed start would have had an impact on the players.

She said on Sky Sports: "As a player you work so hard over the years to come up with your way of preparing for a game.

"Things like this are difficult to deal with."

But Arsenal's Kim Little refused to put her side's poor start down to the issue. She said: "We're all professionals, we all know we have to turn up as soon as that whistle blows."