It's impossible to confirm whether Sam Kerr’s ears were burning from her manager’s high praise, or if the Australian striker - who scored her third goal in her last three matches in Chelsea’s 3-0 victory over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday - was merely a proxy for the thousands of fans who packed out the lower edges of Stamford Bridge’s East Stand to catch the smallest of glimpses of the returned Emma Hayes.
What can be confirmed is that Kerr was hungry, particularly so after she harried Spurs' defence and opened the scoring with a sensational solo goal after Millie Bright's ball over the top.
It goes someway in explaining why midway through Hayes’ first press conference back as Chelsea manager since her six-week absence following an emergency hysterectomy surgery, Kerr interrupted the 46-year-old just as she reaching the good part.
“There is often this sense that coaching has to be done from coaches to players. Instead, I want players to be coaches on the pitch,” Hayes said in response to a question of whether she’s now a more lethal manager after spending a spell watching from the vantage point of a living room.
“So Sam Kerr said to me that when she scored against Manchester United the other day, just prior to that Guro (Reiten) had said to her that her touch was all over the place, maybe three or four subsequent moves. But what Guro said to her is, 'Sam, next time the ball comes, Sam, turn and shoot.'
“Sam said, 'It just made me feel so confident,' and I said when I was away....”
Suddenly Hayes’ phone began to chirp. “Oh, no, what a rookie.” A pause. A shake of the head. “It’s Sam Kerr... she wants to eat but my press conference is going on too long. Listen I’ll be quick. F***ing hell, alright."
If you ask Hayes, the 46-year-old will say, with a glinting playful smile, that she relished her “peace and quiet” away from all the rigours of the dugout and this ilk of post-match carnival (“I have the best relationship I possibly can with [the players], even in the good and bad moments, but you can see they rule me and not the other way around”).
The familiar management itch arrived every now again, forcing her to admit to assistant manager Denise Reddy at some point that she felt “redundant at home”, forced to experience her squad through a television screen and via a live feed into Reddit’s ear.
But while Hayes offered constant support to Reddy and general manager Paul Green as the Blues racked up a six-game winning streak in all competitions, she kept her distance. During games, she baked (“mostly cookies, banana bread. Especially the Brighton game”). It was, according to Hayes, “the best way to handle it”.
“They left me alone, I needed it," she said. "They didn't burden me. I needed to recover, I was poorly. I had to take the energy for myself and take myself out of that. I don't think I spoke to Millie (Bright) and Magda (Eriksson) in particular, for at least two and a half weeks. I really appreciate that from my team. But I also understand conversations they might have wanted. But I wasn't there and they don't burden Paul and Denise with that.”
But now, Hayes is back, her return heralded with an emphatic London derby victory over Spurs at a pulsating Stamford Bridge, firing her side to the WSL summit beyond title-rivals Arsenal and Manchester United and offering a glimpse of the more ferociously ruthless Chelsea have old that have claimed 11 trophies and reached two Champions League finals under her supervision.
That Hayes’ return also coincided with Chelsea Women’s 30th birthday, and a recognition of her decade with the club, felt more appropriate than fortuitous. Not that Hayes gave much oxygen for such fanfare.
“Alright, I’m back. How was your international break?” mimicked Chelsea midfielder Erin Cuthbert as she recalled the first words Hayes uttered to her upon her return. “‘This is what we’re going to do, this is the games we’ve got coming up, London derby.’ It was nothing different to what Denise would have told us that Emma told us. It was just the gameplan, laser focus, the process and everybody knows the process."
However, Hayes admitted the time away has provided a new, albeit calmer, edge to her management methods for the reigning WSL champions.
“Often pitchside, when you're without the ball, you as a whole team can get more stressed about something, because you think maybe it's worse than it is," Hayes explained.
“From home, I'll give the Man United game as an example. Two evenly-matched teams but I felt comfortable in the first half. I'm not sure everybody felt comfortable pitchside.”
For objective information, such a disconnected angle can be pivotal. Hayes points to the number of entries a team made into the penalty box, or how many shots were actually levied. Possession stats read differently from a couch.
“Today, when the game started slowly for us in possession, all I kept thinking was I'm going to use all my experience from home,” Hayes said.
“Unless Paul says to me, there's a problem, because I know he has that bird eye angle, then chill out, everyone chill out. So I chilled out like I was sat on the sofa, at least for the portions of the game that might stress the team out.
“I'm trying to manage, but in a calm manner I might add. I feel like a bit of a mother hen coming back. Everyone is still operating and doing what they were doing while I'm away. But I'm just chiming in and being the leader.“
That is not to say the usual Hayes experience is shifting, nor that the various WSL touchlines up and down the country will no longer be privy to Hayes’ booming match voice and electric reactions (Cuthbert's sublime strike against Spurs coaxed some out).
Behind the scenes, already tactical tweaks are underway. Hayes has meetings scheduled with players to discuss analysis, injuries, areas of improvement and game time, as well as the manifold takeaways from Hayes’ couch studies.
While Chelsea have extended an impressive winning streak, during Hayes' absence and in the matches prior there lingered the sense that the squad had yet to shift out of second gear, instead rolling through the necessary box-checking. Before the London derby, Chelsea had failed to win a league match by a larger margin than two goals.
In the first half against Spurs, the gearshift looked to have been shoved forward. And while familiar foibles snuck back into their game after the interval, a 3-0 victory was a marked improvement.
“The most important thing I'm looking forward to the most are the things I watched at home from television, the things I saw [Kerr] working on in the game today, and I'm most pleased to follow up on that,” Hayes said.
Chelsea return to action with their Champions League group stage clash against Real Madrid. It’d be foolish to assume that Hayes has not already cobbled up her preferred game plan, but as Cuthbert explained, there is a sense of reinvigoration with Hayes' return.
“It’s like anything if you’re a football player, and you get injured,” Cuthbert said. “When you go away from the game, you realise how much you love the game, how much you appreciate it and how much you want to be back so I think it’s the same for Emma.
"She's got a renewed sense of life about her, and she's come back really determined."
For the rest of the league, it might serve as a warning.
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