Karen Carney: Without Paul Green, Chelsea are unrecognisable and face a tough summer

Karen Carney, who joined Chelsea in 2015 after a pivotal conversation with Paul Green, believes the club’s decision to part ways with the long-serving head of women’s football has left the squad unrecognisable and staring at a defining summer. Speaking exclusively, Carney traced her own move to Kingsmeadow back to Green’s blunt ultimatum: accept the project or watch it accelerate without you. That edge, she insists, became the culture that powered 12 years of domestic dominance.

Green and then-manager Emma Hayes operated as a deliberate double act. Hayes dazzled prospects with vision and passion; Green supplied the cold reality checks that closed deals. Between them they collected seven WSL titles, five FA Cups and two League Cups, while constantly refreshing a winning squad rather than waiting for decline. Carney recalls pre-season jolts when proven internationals arrived and instantly raised standards—“winning was non-negotiable,” she says—and credits Green’s scouting and negotiation network for making those upgrades seamless.

When Hayes departed for the United States women’s national team in 2024, Green remained, a continuity link that many players assumed would steady the handover to new head coach Sonia Bompastor. Instead, Green’s exit this spring has coincided with a slump that leaves Chelsea nine points behind Manchester City in the WSL and has Carney questioning what identity remains. The 5-1 defeat to City last month looked, in her words, “style-less,” and she fears the real transition is only now beginning.

Compounding the uncertainty, up to nine senior players—including Hannah Hampton, Lucy Bronze, Sam Kerr and Guro Reiten—are out of contract in July. Recruitment, once Green’s personal crusade of research, phone calls and tailored pitches, must now be rebuilt from scratch. Carney warns that the traditional Chelsea sell—“we win, do you want in?”—has been replaced by a trickier narrative of chasing rivals and weathering reconstruction. The club’s recent transfer windows have already skewed younger: since Bompastor’s arrival only one signing has been older than 28. Carney expects that trend to intensify, with the average age of incoming talent dropping again as Chelsea mimic the long-term model recently adopted by the men’s side.

The looming overhaul will reveal who truly controls the women’s recruitment strategy and whether the old-school, relationship-driven approach that Green epitomised can be replicated by data-led or committee-based methods. For a dressing-room accustomed to guaranteed silverware, the next months will test both the retention of star names and the allure of a project suddenly shorn of its most persuasive architect.

Chelsea’s summer, Carney concludes, will be “massive.” Without Green’s institutional memory and magnetism, the club that once felt inevitable must prove it can still compel players to believe.