A family who came to watch Chelsea v Spurs on Sunday
Elsie, nine, and her family travelled from near Brighton to see her favourite player, Lauren James

Rob and Aupair, along with their big brother Olly, had traveled up from near BRIGHTON to see their daughter. She couldn't wait to watch her first football match because she was going to ask her favourite player for her shirt.

"We watched all the women's matches through the Euros, they're both into football a lot."

The women's game is escalating and we want to be a part of that. It would be a great event.

We went to the club's museum and saw the pictures of all the European matches, so we'll definitely be coming for more.

What the English women's football team hopes for is that fans like Vicky and Elsie will come back for more and that it is not just a great day out.

The WSL took the spotlight in English football this weekend, between the Premier League taking a break for the World Cup and the England team starting their campaign.

There was a great spectacle, with Manchester United's thrilling late comeback atArsenal, the breathless 3-3 draw betweenLiverpool andBrighton, and the sumptuous volley byErin Cuthbert.

Chelsea take a corner
More than 38,000 fans were at Stamford Bridge on Sunday - a record for Chelsea Women in a home match

It drew in large groups of people. The women broke their home attendance record as they played at the bridge. There were tens of thousands of people at the stadium on Saturday.

The Championship had good attendances. The crowd of 11,137 was a record for a women's game.

How to turn fans from occasional day trippers to dedicated supporters who follow the WSL week in, week out is the question now. Skinner said last week that he got "brains on seats".

'We're all outgrowing our stadiums'

The things are moving in the right direction. In August 2020 it was 3,092, and in November it was 5,099. The goal is 6000 by the year 2024.

The pains are growing. Kingsmeadow is only able to hold 4,850. Meadow Park has a capacity of 4,500, which is not very large for a football game.

The success of the Lionesses at the European Championships has made women's football in England super-charged. The question is what comes next.

Chambers thinks the women's game needs to seize the opportunity.

She said that the biggest change they wanted to see happen this year was getting more fans in the door.

It's good that fans come to the stadium every so often, but we want to make sure they are embedded into our experience so they want more.

There needs to be a middle ground between the stadium they used to share with Wimbledon and the arena they used to call home.

She wanted to be at the press conference more. Is there a plan to go to medium-size stadiums before everyone comes home to the large stadium in the future?

I'm pretty sure that we're all outgrowing our small stadiums.

The domestic women game needs to be braver, starting with raising ticket prices to take advantage of its high popularity, but not at the expense of the men's game.

Adult tickets for Chelsea v Tottenham cost as little as £9, with under-20s and over-65s able to attend for as little as a pound.

When the Blues host Paris St-Germain in the Champions League on Wednesday - a meeting between two titans of women's European football - everyone will again be able to go for less than a tenner.

'We have to be more ambitious'

One thing that we don't talk about enough is how cheap women's football is. If we want to play more in these places, we need to increase the overall pricing structure.

The audiences are there for at least eight games a year. For ourselves, we need to be more ambitious. It's cheap to watch women's football. I think it is.

In addition to Manchester United on Saturday, the home games of the two teams this season are at the same stadium. The women's club game at England's biggest stadia is becoming normal as a result of these games.

They beat Spurs at the men's ground in September in front of a club record 47,300.

I think it's one of our two homes, according to the manager. We feel more and more at home here.

Fans of Leah Galton of Manchester United show a banner
Manchester United brought a large number of travelling fans with them to Emirates Stadium

Away ends were added to the big stadium matches. Competitive atmospheres are usually nixed when WSL crowds are mixed.

There was no risk of this happening on Saturday night as the Manchester United players celebrated wildly with their fans.

Skinner said that they made a point of going straight to the fans at the end of the game.

If you give us away ends, we will get a lot of fans through the door. It was a good sign that tonight.

It was good to know where they were when we went to them at the end.

The WSL is in a unique position, boosted over the summer like never before, and continuing through until Christmas as the premier league sits on pause until the end of the year.

To make sure that thousands of others like her come back for more, it must now be capitalized.

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