Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s Chelsea Women Evolution Under Sonia Bompastor Tactics

For many Chelsea Women fans, the thought of having someone other than Emma Hayes standing on the touchline was something that they would have struggled to understand too easily.

Yet

.

As far as the performances have been concerned, nothing has looked drastically different, with Chelsea still showing the same confidence and controlling the tempo of their matches as they did under Hayes.

However, some tweaks have been made to tactics and personnel, with Bompastor introducing new faces and implementing her own stylistic ideas as she seeks to put her stamp on the side.

One

now arguably their most dangerous outlet.

This tactical analysis will focus on explaining how Bompastor has adapted her game and why Chelsea Women have benefitted from the increased freedom she is enjoying.

Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s Increased Attacking Threat

When Johanna Rytting Kaneryd arrived at Chelsea from BK Häcken Dam in the summer of 2022, those

her game noted her speed and directness as things that made her an exciting player and one that Hayes would appreciate.

Bompastor, too, has made good use of those aspects of her play, but she has asked Rytting Kaneryd to use her unpredictability more whenever the ball is at her feet.

This is because Bompastor’s game plan revolves around her team’s possessing wingers who can score as well as create.

Any player who can move in multiple directions and keep opponents guessing will always be looked upon favourably.

As the season has gone on, it has been apparent how well Rytting Kaneryd can do this.

In this situation, she has manoeuvred herself into a position to either take the ball towards the goal line or to cut inside and test her luck in front of the goal.

This is the crucial difference between the present and former campaigns.

Last season, Hayes tendered to position Rytting Kaneryd closer to the sidelines, balancing out the inverted runs of England’s Lauren James from the opposite side.

At the same time, Bompastor has dispensed with that and wants her to get further inside the pitch.

As a result, it is now much harder for opposing sides to predict her movement and position themselves accordingly, which is why her compatriot and Tottenham Hotspur Women defender Amanda Nildén has kept her distance here as she attempts to guard against several possibilities.

Rytting Kaneryd has so far averaged 5.92 touches inside the penalty area this season, up from 4.88 last time out, highlighting her newfound offensive threat.

Having the ability to stay wide or cut inside allows Bompastor to implement a crucial part of her game plan: the push-pull style of play in which she asks those in the wide attacking spaces to operate.

This sees one of the wingers hold their position whilst the other cuts inside, but it is left to those players to decide who has which role to play, and they can change each time they find themselves in these areas.

In this case, the summer signing Sandy Baltimore (who actually featured as a left-back against Everton Women) had the ball, and she and Norway forward Guro Reiten opted to hold their positions.

This then frees Rytting Kaneryd to run inside Greece attacker Veatriki Sarri and offers Aggie Beever-Jones a passing option in a central position.

However, on another occasion, the roles could be reversed, in which case Rytting Kaneryd would revert to what she was doing last season.

Getting this right is not easy and requires a good understanding between the wingers, but it has not troubled Chelsea yet.

Rytting Kaneryd and Reiten’s both attempts to play further inside the field have undoubtedly helped make this a viable way of playing, and it is something else that has allowed Bompastor to make such a strong start at the club.

Bompastor also wants Rytting Kaneryd to play further inside the pitch, which opens up space for the right-back to advance into the final third.

This is another major feature of her game plan and was evident in

as she constantly offered support at the top end of the field.

It is because of that that Bompastor sought to reunite with England’s Lucy Bronze at Kingsmeadow in the summer (the two having previously worked together at Lyon).

Bronze is known for her attacking threat, and Bompastor recognised that her presence would encourage Rytting Kaneryd to leave her wing without exposing it.

This situation highlights the understanding that both players have formed with each other and how it has contributed to Rytting Kaneryd’s getting into positions in which she can play a more significant role in Chelsea’s attack.

Her effort might have sailed over the bar here, having beaten Aston Villa Women left-back Paula Tomás, but it is still clear to see how the Sweden forward’s game has reached new levels this season and why she has been such a critical player for them inside the final third.

Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s Chelsea Women Heatmap In 2024/25 WSL Season

This section of the scout report has indicated how Rytting Kaneryd’s positioning has changed between last season and this one, and the best way to make a direct contrast between them is by examining their heat maps.

Both are shown in this graphic, and it is clear that she is mainly playing in the same areas but spending less time tighter to the sidelines this time around and is instead getting further inside the field on a more regular basis.

Overall, then, it is evident just how much her role on the team has been altered.

The fact that 64.3% of her shots have been on target this time around (compared to 54.1% last season) and that she has already matched her goal tally of three from the same campaign highlights how it is benefitting her and Chelsea simultaneously.

Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s Defensive Qualities

However, it does need to be pointed out that Johanna Rytting Kaneryd has been a valuable asset not only in possession but also out of it, contributing just as much to Chelsea’s defensive play.

This is another reason that she has been one of the first names on the Chelsea teamsheet this season.

With the modern game demanding that teams defend on the front foot, it perhaps comes as no surprise that Rytting Kaneryd is highly effective at pressing the ball and at limiting the amount of time that her opponents have to move it out of danger.

However, she has been especially strong at timing her runs and understanding when to instigate the press and when to be more patient.

This is why life was so uncomfortable for Everton and Tottenham when they faced Chelsea earlier in the season.

Both have a preference for building from the back, but that only played to Rytting Kaneryd’s strengths and allowed her to close them down time and time again, showing her speed whenever it was the right moment to apply the pressure.

She has that timing, which means that she can adapt her front-footed defending to other situations, too, including this one, when she needs to take an alternative approach.

As can be seen, Twente Vrouwen have the ball and are looking to clear the danger, but Beever-Jones has shifted across to close down Lieske Carleer and to hinder her attempt to progress it up the field.

As a result, Rytting Kaneryd was able to focus her attention on the secondary defensive action, not worrying about the ball now but instead about where it might go.

That led to her waiting until Carleer had turned back towards her own goal here before moving forward to join Beever-Jones and cut off any remaining passing options that she might have had available to her.

She has not only doubled up on opponents inside the final third, though.

There are plenty of examples of Rytting Kaneryd tracking back to help her team inside their own third, too.

This is one of them, with Real Madrid Femenino’s Colombia winger Linda Caicedo getting into a position from which she can set up a goal.

Bronze has needed to commit to a tackle to halt her progress.

However, by doing so, she has opened herself up to being taken out of the game as a result of Caicedo’s sharp movement, which is precisely what happens here.

At this point, the Real Madrid player could send an inswinging cross into the middle with her outside foot, but that is prevented here by Rytting Kaneryd reading her intentions and reacting at the right time to shut down the threat.

Once again, it comes down to precise timing to make this successful, but the fact that Rytting Kaneryd has succeeded in 61.5% of her defensive duels so far indicates that she or Chelsea have not needed to show much concern about this so far.

It is not always about committing to tackles and blocks, though.

There are also times when simply being in a good position is enough to end attacks.

Rytting Kaneryd also has an abundance of intelligence, and she demonstrated it here as Arsenal Women attempted to breach her team’s goal area.

At this moment in time, Australia forward Caitlin Foord has managed to evade Bronze’s attempt to stop her progress and is now looking to see if she can pass the ball into Mariona Caldentey, with the Spain star on the edge of the goal area.

However, Rytting Kaneryd recognises that and so positions herself close by, not making an attempt to win the ball but simply putting doubt into Foord’s mind.

It was enough for the Arsenal player to have second thoughts and dribble the ball forward on her own rather than pass it to a teammate, not wanting to risk it being intercepted by Rytting Kaneryd (something she has done 3.4 times per game already this season).

That leads to her being surrounded by those Chelsea players standing between her and the goal.

Whilst it is clear that this was a team effort, Rytting Kaneryd’s role cannot be underestimated, and it was that role that ultimately led to the attack breaking down prematurely.

That shows once again why she has been just as valuable for defence as in offence.

Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s Things To Work On

While Johanna Rytting Kaneryd’s work so far has been largely positive, she is by no means the finished article.

Instead, there are still a number of aspects of her game that she can continue to improve in, both this season and in future campaigns, and the analysis will now turn to these.

Throughout the scout report, it has been apparent that Rytting Kaneryd has a plethora of ways to use the ball when she gets into dangerous positions.

However, there is an occasional prevalence of her lack of clarity of thought when she does get into these areas, with her almost having too many options and not being able to decide which is the best one.

This was a prime example of that, with her in a similar position to the one she was in previously against Tottenham and once again coming up against a team in Everton who have been forced onto the back foot and who don’t seem too sure of how to negate her threat.

At this stage, it was simply about moving one way or the other, and Rytting Kaneryd would have been able to break beyond the Everton back line, but she seemed to second-guess herself this time and ended up losing control of the ball as a result.

It might have only been a momentary blemish, but it was enough for her to lose the momentum she had built up until that point and for the attack to break down in disappointing circumstances.

There is an argument that the presence of Belgium international Justine Vanhaevermaet in the corner of her eye would have led to this lapse in concentration, and there is some truth to that.

However, there is no escaping from the fact that Rytting Kaneryd looked to go one way and then the other and didn’t seem to think as streamlined as she has done in other similar situations.

Perhaps this is a downside to her sharp movement that she and Chelsea need to be aware of as the season progresses.

That theme of not always making the right decision has also been seen in other aspects of her play, such as when she received the ball on the edge of the goal area.

At this point, it is clear that she has a sight of the goal, so shooting is not the worst thing that she could do, but the distance that the ball would need to cover and the speed and angle that it would need to be sent towards the Twente goal make it a risky shot to get right.

With that in mind, the presence of Beever-Jones, Wieke Kaptein and Maika Hamano inside the goal area and the overlapping run of France right-back Ève Périsset make it possible to pass the ball and to allow the attack to be built up more before the trigger is pulled, and that is perhaps the better option for the team here.

However, Rytting Kaneryd ignores them and takes the shot anyway, which is easy for Wales goalkeeper Olivia Clark to gather up.

Again, she should not be heavily criticised for it, with Chelsea winning this match comfortably in the end, but it could cost them in tighter games if the margin is just a single goal.

The other thing that she needs to be wary of is being too aggressive and eager to win the ball in 1-v-1 battles.

As can be seen here, Crystal Palace Women have possession and don’t appear to be going anywhere.

Wales left-back Lily Woodham, who is on loan from Seattle Reign, takes the ball towards the sideline.

Rytting Kaneryd is tracking her closely, and the best policy would be for the latter to follow her to ensure that she can’t turn and move back towards the Chelsea goal area.

However, rather than doing that, she opts to go shoulder-to-shoulder with Woodham.

She ended up forcing her to the ground, conceding what felt like a needless foul and allowing Crystal Palace to move the ball back up the field.

If this were the only time that she had conceded a foul in this way, it would not be worth bringing up, but there have been a couple of situations in which she has put her foot in when she could have taken a more passive approach and shepherded the ball out of danger.

Whilst it didn’t matter here because Chelsea comfortably saw off the WSL newcomers, it could be the case in another game that free kicks conceded cheaply lead to goals, and that could make the difference on the day, so it is just a case of ensuring that she doesn’t put her team under pressure unnecessarily.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this tactical analysis has taken a closer look at Chelsea Women winger Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, who has been one of the WSL champions’ best players this season under new head coach Sonia Bompastor (if not the best) and who will continue to play an intrinsic role in their bid to compete for honours on all four fronts as the campaign goes on.

As the scout report has indicated, there is a lot to like about Rytting Kaneryd’s contributions to Chelsea’s tactics this season.

It is apparent that Bompastor has looked to lean on her direct attacking threat much more than Hayes did last season and is currently reaping the rewards.

The early signs are that the changes highlighted have worked out for both the player and the team, and no doubt continuing to get her into these areas will only benefit them both moving forward.

As has also been highlighted, there are still things that she can keep working on, but the signs are that fans can be optimistic about Chelsea’s prospects this season.

Having Rytting Kaneryd available for each match will be critical for them to deliver on their pre-season aims.