Deadline day in the Women’s Super League may have appeared as a mad dash for most but for Chloe Kelly, it approached with a sense of calm.
“I was at the driving range with my husband,” she says in a round-table interview before Sunday’s north London derby against Tottenham Hotspur. “I thought: ‘I’m going to switch off for the day’. He was sat on FIFA (the video game) and I was, like, let’s just get out the house.”
Almost by coincidence, that is when her last-minute loan move to Arsenal was set in motion.
Kelly, who had started just one WSL game this season at Manchester City, was still at the range when she found out about Arsenal’s interest, but she could not hold it in for long. “I remember calling my family straight away to tell them,” she adds. “My brother went upstairs and put his Arsenal shirt on. Straight away my family were really excited for the move as well, which put a smile on my face.”
The 27-year-old England international had endured contrasting emotions over the previous 24 hours.
The WSL transfer deadline was at 11pm on January 30 and Kelly posted on Instagram the night before, saying that her future was not at Manchester City but accepting she would not be leaving in January. It was a bold move, reflecting frustration that potential…
