Chelsea Women have taunted their Arsenal counterparts after the Gunners brought the wrong colour socks for the WSL clash at Stamford Bridge.
Kick off was delayed by 30 minutes due to the mishap and to compound Arsenal’s misery Chelsea ran out 3-1 winners.
Emma Hayes’ side are three points clear at the top of the WSL table ahead of their closest challengers Manchester City, who have a game in hand, while the Blues are six points ahead of Arsenal.
Arsenal are understood to have brought white socks instead of red, which resulted in a clash with Chelsea.
Chelsea mocked Arsenal after the Gunners brought the wrong socks for their WSL clash
Arsenal wore Chelsea’s away socks, but were forced to tape over the Nike logo
They initially warmed up wearing their usual white and red socks before being forced to switch
Both teams wear white socks as part of their home kits, but with Chelsea the hosts, Arsenal were forced to change colours just minutes before kick off.
The Gunners eventually settled the dispute by wearing Chelsea’s black away socks, but had to tape over the Nike logo, with blue tape used in most cases. The Gunners confirmed they have paid for the socks themselves.
Arsenal are sponsored by Nike’s rivals Adidas, so are unable to show the logo of Chelsea’s kit manufacturer.
Chelsea wore blue socks when they played at the Emirates in December.
As well as teams not being allowed to wear the same coloured shirts; shorts and socks must also be different.
Both teams were forced to come back out for a second warm-up due to the delay.
The game eventually kicked off at 7.30pm, half an hour after the scheduled start time.
Arsenal women’s official X account refused to reveal the exact cause of the delay but explained the match had been delayed due to a ‘kit issue’.
Meanwhile, Chelsea’s official social media account posted a cryptic tweet, adding: ‘Ready to work our socks off.’
Ian Wright was amongst the high-profile names that hit out at the gaffe as he fumed over the delay as thousands of supporters sat waiting for the game to begin.
The Arsenal men’s legend described the saga as ’embarrassing’, posting on his X profile: ‘Embarrassing this. Ridiculous.’ in relation to the delay.
Furious supporters also fumed at the incident with one user posting online: ‘Quite agree. The biggest WSL match in the season and someone in the kit department messed up so badly. How on earth could that have happened?’
Another similar post stated: ‘Never in a million years would I expect something like socks to be a big deal.’
The delay did little to help Arsenal’s preparation as they conceded three goals against their cross-city rivals in the opening 30 minutes of the match.
Lauren James gave Chelsea the lead, with Sjoeke Nusken proceeding to score a brace. Macario scored a late own goal as Arsenal reduced the deficit, but Chelsea still took all three points.
