Chelsea Women storm as Jess Carter likes tweet calling Emma Hayes ‘bonkers’ for criticising relationship with team-mate
CHELSEA star Jess Carter has let her social media do the talking following controversial comments by Blues boss Emma Hayes.
Hayes criticised both player-player relationships and player-coach relationships in Women’s football on Thursday.
The Chelsea manager, who is leaving her position at the end of the season, labelled both kinds of relationships as “inappropriate”.
The 47-year-old said: “I think player-coach relationships are inappropriate, player-to-player relationships are inappropriate”.
Player-player relationships are common in the Women’s game with Chelsea’s Carter known to be in a relationship with teammate Ann-Katrin Berger herself.
Other high-profile stars are also in public relationships including Arsenal duo Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema as well as fellow Chelsea player Sam Kerr who is dating West Ham midfielder Kristie Mewis.
And Carter appears to have made her feelings on her manager’s comments clear by liking a string of posts on X that criticised Hayes’ words.
One read: “Beyond bonkers to bring player/player relationships into this conversation IMO.”
While another stated: “You don’t have to justify what Emma said btw, it’s a flawed answer no matter how you spin it.
“There’s a fundamental difference between player-player and player-coach relationships and that’s imbalance of power. She could’ve said anything but that.”
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Another post liked by Carter read: “Anyone aligning coach x player relationships with player x player relationships is fundamentally misunderstanding the power imbalances at play.”
There has been widespread criticism of player and coach relationships recently with other top level managers speaking out against them.
Leicester manager Willie Kirk was suspended last week after allegations of a relationship with a player in the WSL outfit’s squad.
However it appears that Carter is taking more of an issue with the criticism of player-player relationships rather than player-coach relationships.
When Hayes was probed further about her criticism of relationships between players she explained they present “challenges” to teams.
She said: “I think it’s about the challenges it poses. One player is in the team, one’s not in the team.
“One might be in the last year of their contract, one might not be.
“One might be competing in a position with someone else, you don’t need me to spell that out, it presents challenges.
“I think we all know those of us who have been in the women’s game for a long period of time, those things have been happening in dressing rooms.
“I think longer term it would be ideal, in an ideal world, where you don’t have to deal with that.
“It’s quite challenging for coaching teams to have to deal with it. You talk about it from a hierarchical perspective, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t present challenges, it does,
“I think you have to work an awful lot on how to manage those challenges in the locker room because they are far from ideal.
“Listen, we’re dealing with human beings, and every office place has different challenges to deal with, that’s one of the challenges I have to deal with in my job,
“It’s the same things you have to deal with at work, I guess, it’s just I have to manage it and like I said it presents challenges.
“We do talk about it internally, I think long term, in an ideal world, it’s something we didn’t have to.”