Drew Spence – Desire, commitment and talent

Drew Spence was one of the last of the ‘old-school’ footballers left at Chelsea Women when she finally said goodbye to the club in the summer of 2022, having grown with us every step of the way from training twice a week and playing in front of crowds barely reaching triple digits to becoming a professional, trophy-winning machine that packs out Kingsmeadow most weeks.

It was in 2009 that Spence made her debut as a Blue, when she came off the bench in a thumping FA Cup win over Rotherham, a little over six months after trading the youth set-up at Fulham for our Cobham training ground.

Spence scored – ‘A scuffed left-footed finish,’ she recalls – but she remembers it as much for her attire that day. ‘It must have been freezing, because I was wearing gloves. I’d never do that now!’ Old school…

For the first five years of her time at Chelsea, each of the managers she played under – Steve Jones, Matt Beard and, finally, Emma Hayes – all agreed on one thing: Spence was a player who had everything in her locker to be successful at the top level.

Ahead of the first-ever WSL season in 2011, Beard said of her: ‘On the ball she's different class. She's strong, good in the air, strong in the tackle and has a very good football brain. I'm excited about her – not just for next season, but also the future as well.’

By the time Hayes took charge, in the August of the following year, Spence was yet to justify that excitement. Appearances came sparingly and she was among the three players who missed from the spot in the penalty shoot-out defeat to Birmingham City a few months earlier.

The English game was still a few years away from turning fully professional. Spence had grown up kicking the ball around in the back garden – wearing an Arsenal shirt with Fabregas on the back – with her brother Lewwis, who was now making his way in the non-league section of the English football pyramid after coming through the ranks at Crystal Palace. Drew needed more.

‘We trained twice a week,’ she recalled in an interview years later. ‘For the person and athlete I know I am today, that was never going to be enough for me to hit certain fitness requirements I needed to play.’

She had tried her hand at coaching on the side and did not enjoy that, so she supplemented her football income by working in a shop and was still doing so when we were going for the title in 2014. So much has changed since then.

‘That's why I think the kids today are so lucky. They go full-time straight away at 16 or 17 and I don't think I had that until I was about 21, at least.’

It was during a trip to Japan, for the International Women's Club Championship, that the penny finally dropped for Spence. Or, to put it in her words, ‘I got told off massively and then basically cried for an hour!

‘When Beardy was manager, he didn't really tell me how it was – but Emma did. I'd pretty much carried on the same habits as always and I thought my talent would help me out in the end. Really, you need to be able to do everything outside of that.’

Hayes recalled the discussion in an interview a few years back and has no doubt it was the turning point in Spence’s time as a Chelsea player.

‘I wouldn't let her leave the room until she heard me, but it was a huge wake-up call for her and she responded in the right way,’ said Hayes. ‘She responds well to me and I feel like a parent to her; I care about her deeply and we've been through a fair bit together in the time we've spent at this club. I've got nothing but good things to say about her, I absolutely adore her.’

Allowing the self-indulgence of a personal recollection here, this correspondent also noticed a change in Spence over the years that followed that trip to the Far East.

The few interviews I’d conducted with her prior to that were tough – the monosyllabic responses coming back my way leaving little to work with. It was clear she was painfully shy.

Gradually, she started to come out of her shell. Confident, engaging and full of laughter, often at her own expense, as she was more than happy to share so many different aspects of her life. Who would have guessed she was snooker loopy as a kid, enamoured by the cue skills of four-time world champion John Higgins?

On the football field, too, it was clear she was happier in her own skin. The talent on the ball was always there, but now she was capable of controlling games from the middle of the park, demonstrating a tactical nous not previously seen often enough and, crucially, the fitness levels needed to compete in a league that was steaming head first into a professional era.

With each passing year, the improvements were there for all to see. She was a mainstay of two league and FA Cup Double-winning squads, netting the WSL title-clinching goal in the second of those triumphs in 2018. Earlier that season she had made history by scoring our first-ever goal at Kingsmeadow and, even more memorably, our maiden Champions League strike at our new home in KT1.

During the Spring Series in 2017, Spence finished as our leading scorer as we lifted yet more silverware, including a spectacular strike in an FA Cup semi-final defeat to Birmingham City. She was only outscored by Bethany England in the Covid-affected 2019/20 campaign as we secured another WSL title, this time with a Continental League Cup to accompany it.

Unfortunately, the minutes, and goals, started to dry up a little after that, as the club continued to bring in world-class talents to push us towards our goal of following domestic dominance by reaching the summit of European football. She was among the substitutes for our first-ever Champions League final, alongside fellow Academy graduate Hannah Blundell, who had been with her almost every step of the way during their rise.

Ironically, the international recognition most felt she should have got with England when she was playing her best football finally came in the autumn of 2021, when she was featuring sparingly for Chelsea. Having only appeared in a friendly for England, she was able to switch allegiance to Jamaica, whom she helped qualify for only their second World Cup.

Recognising the dwindling opportunities at Kingsmeadow, it was announced before the end of the 2021/22 campaign that Spence would be leaving the club after 14 years, giving her a chance for a fitting farewell from the supporters who loved singing about ‘one of our own’, having watched her grow into an excellent footballer and a wonderful person, whose dry wit and infectious laugh made her such a popular presence at the club.

‘Drew has epitomised everything that we have been about in my tenure,’ said Hayes of her long-serving midfielder. ‘She’s watched the club grow from amateur to one of the top teams in Europe and she’s been instrumental in that journey.

‘I’ve watched Drew grow from a young player and blossomed as a senior pro. She’s fully deserving of everything she’s achieved and again she will join a group of legends for what she has done at this football club and I know everyone here will really miss her.’

The achievements will never be taken away: first player to appear in 200 Chelsea Women matches in the modern era (although her tally of 239 will soon be surpassed by Millie Bright), involvement in every major trophy success in the club’s history up to 2022, scorer of 45 goals at a rate of around one in five.

And on top of all that, those moments shared in a dressing room which has gone multi-national over the past decade or so; once filled with footballers who had the desire but perhaps not the talent, now packed with world-class talents. Not one of them with a bad word to say about Spence.

It was all worth it.

Eniola Aluko – firing Chelsea to a new level

A sign of how far women’s football and, indeed, Eniola Aluko have come since she first pulled on a Chelsea shirt in 2007 can be seen with a quick Google search.

Simply type the name ‘Aluko’ into the popular search engine and note the name of the first result. This despite Eniola’s brother, Sone, being a professional footballer who has played in the Premier League and been capped at international level by Nigeria.

That will come as little surprise to anyone who is familiar with the work of someone who, unlike so many footballers, cannot be defined simply by what she did with a ball at her feet but, rather, what she has achieved off the pitch as well.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, though. Rewind the clock to 2007 and Aluko was trading one south London club for another, as she went from the recent dissolved Charlton Athletic to join an ambitious Chelsea outfit with designs on challenging Arsenal at the top of the English game.

Despite only recently turning 20, Aluko was an FA Cup winner and three years into her international career. The women’s football landscape in this country was very different compared with today, and such achievements by a youngster were far from uncommon – a few years earlier, Katie Chapman, our legendary former captain, had won an FA Cup final at the age of 14.

Professional footballers were few and far between, particularly once Fulham and Charlton opted out of the women’s game, and so Aluko was studying while training part-time at Chelsea. It was not a natural fit, and the chance to play in America after a little more than a year with the club offered her a way out.

‘Chelsea Ladies was a very unambitious club at that time,’ she noted in an interview back in 2016. ‘I was also at a different point in my life; I was studying and very much juggling football with many other things.

‘Football wasn't necessarily my 100 per cent focus. The same could maybe be said about the Chelsea Ladies team within the club.’

By the time Aluko was back at the club, ahead of the 2013 campaign, it was a completely different story. She’d played in America, won an FA Cup with Birmingham City – defeating the Blues in the final – and recently represented Team GB at a home Olympic Games.

The thrill of that campaign, which included a win over Brazil in front of a crowd of 70,000, ignited a passion in women’s football in this country. With the newly appointed Emma Hayes at the helm here, Aluko had no doubts about where the club was heading.

‘Straight away I felt it was more of a long-term vision,’ she said. ‘I wanted stability, to work under a manager I felt was very advanced in terms of her tactical awareness. Emma’s someone I’ve always respected.’

It was a two-way respect between the two – Hayes initially struggled for results as she looked to change the culture of a club that wasn’t used to winning. Aluko’s importance at the time was as much about the demands she placed on herself and others as it was in her efforts on the pitch, although she was still combining football with a career as a trainee solicitor.

In her second season back with the Blues, she was a key figure as we came within touching distance of winning the Women’s Super League title, going from second bottom the previous season to second place.

Her efforts during that title near miss and at the start of the 2015 season were recognised with a personal honour, as she became the maiden recipient of the Chelsea Women’s Player of the Year prize, which was handed out at the club’s end of season awards dinner.

That summer she was part of the England Women’s squad that made history at the World Cup in Canada by reaching the semi-finals, eliciting further advancement for the game on these shores as the Lionesses captured the imagination of the nation and came back with a bronze medal.

The confidence from that summer tournament was on display when we faced Notts County in the first-ever Women’s FA Cup final to be held at Wembley Stadium. They couldn’t get close to Aluko all game, and she assisted Ji So-Yun’s winning goal as part of a Player of the Match-winning display.

It was the first trophy won by Chelsea Women in the club’s history – but there was plenty more to come during Aluko’s time here. The WSL title followed soon after, making it a Double for 2015, and she was soon scoring her first Champions League goal in a win over Glasgow City.

Milestone appearances followed in the years to come: 150 for the Blues, becoming the first player to reach the landmark, and a century of caps for England, achieved by only nine before her. She was also the WSL’s top scorer in 2016, although her pride at that achievement was tempered somewhat by the club’s failure to add team honours.

That would soon change. Another domestic Double followed with Chelsea in the 2017/18 campaign, her last with the club, and she bowed out with her 68th and final goal in a final-day win over Liverpool to extend her Chelsea Women’s record tally – although it was later surpassed by Fran Kirby – before heading for a new adventure in Italy with Juventus.

‘She's a great team player who does everything that is asked of her and more,’ said Hayes of a player who had been key to the success enjoyed in the manager’s first six years at the helm. ‘She's a competitor, a serial winner.’

It’s away from the pitch, however, that Aluko became most recognisable to the British public.

She was the first female pundit in the history of Match of the Day in 2014, which led to her featuring as the only female footballer to be named on the ‘top 25 football people’ list compiled by Henry Winter for the Telegraph newspaper.

Regular appearances as a pundit followed. Channel Four utilised her expertise at the women’s European Championship in 2017 and, a year later, she was a big part of ITV’s coverage of the men’s World Cup. She’s also covered Chelsea games for Amazon Prime and BT Sport, and her column for the Guardian newspaper provided fascinating insight into the mind of an ex-professional footballer.

Now, having hung up her boots, Aluko is ploughing a new furrow for women in football. Just a week after hanging up her boots, she took on the role of Aston Villa Women’s sporting director. A knee-jerk move by a recently retired player? Not a chance. As far back as 2016, Aluko was mapping out her future career in an interview with the official Chelsea magazine.

‘I'm not interested in coaching at all,’ she revealed. ‘I'm more interested in the management side. Emma is a manager of people and there are many cogs in the wheel to make sure we operate in the right way.

‘My ambition would be to be a sporting director, someone who oversees all elements of how a football club runs – technical, tactical – like Michael Emenalo [then Chelsea’s technical director]. Leading a culture, trying to drive that. I find that fascinating.’

In 2021 she moved to America to take on that very role at Los Angeles-based club Angel City FC ahead of their maiden season in the NWSL, since becoming director of recruitment.

It seems whatever Eniola Aluko puts her mind to, she achieves it – and there are plenty more chapters to be written in the remarkable story of a true great of women’s football, whose place in Chelsea folklore will forever be assured.