Chelsea vs Man City LIVE: WSL team news and line ups as Fran Kirby and Lauren James both start for hosts

Tonight’s clash at Kingsmeadow features the top two leading scorers in the WSL this season.

Khdaija Shaw leads the WSL with 13 for Manchester City this season while Lauren James is one behind on 12.

James has already doubled her tally from last season already, and has stepped up in recent weeks in the absence of Sam Kerr.

There were no fancy cars on show as the players arrived at the ground:

We are now nearing kick off and the players will soon be heading out onto the field to warm up.

Chelsea XI: Hampton, Charles, Carter, Bjorn, Lawrence, Leupolz, Cuthbert (c), Reiten, James, Kirby, Ramirez

Subs: Musovic, Nusken, Perisset, Mjelde, Kaneryd, Buchanan, Cankovic, Beever-Jones, Ingle

Manchester City XI: Keating, Aleixandri, Greenwood (C), Coombs, Kelly, Hemp, Ouahabi, Park, Casparij, Shaw, Hasegawa

SUBS | MacIver, Stokes, Fowler, Angeldahl, Morgan, Mace, Blindkilde-Brown, Mace, Kennedy

The players are there and the match is now just over an hour away from kicking off:

The teams will be announced shortly, but a quick reminder that Chelsea are without talisman goalscorer Sam Kerr for the rest of the season after she sustained an ACL injury during warm weather training.

“For us, normalising it is the sensible thing for us. When you play against Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester United, the nerves and everything is there anyway.

“It’s a big game. It feels big. There’s no denying that. There’s no doubt the importance of the game and this is what we want, to be in this position.

“It’s when you come into it at this stage of the season and you have the opportunity to potentially go within goal difference of the league leaders. That’s exactly what we wanted.”

“We have experience of being in this position and we understand what it takes to win titles,” Hayes said, reported by BBC Sport.

“We will have to use all of that experience in the next part, starting from tomorrow, to be in the best position possible to win another title. But one thing is for certain, the title isn’t decided over one or two games, it’s effectively breaking down the season in blocks.

“We’re in a strong position for sure, but I do not believe we are overwhelming favourites to win a title just because of our position.”

Every year, the nature of the Women’s Super League dictates a single game or moment will define its season. If hindsight can identify where the title race was won and lost, Chelsea’s last three titles follow a theme: in 2021, their winning margin over Manchester City was two points, in 2022, Emma Hayes’s side edged Arsenal by just one point, and in 2023, against Manchester United, it was two again. As the champions now target a fifth league in a row in what is Hayes’s final season, all the evidence suggests tonight’s clash with City may be looked back on as its defining moment.