Sonia Bompastor was as close as it comes to a ready-made replacement for Emma Hayes. Stepping into Hayes' shoes was the equivalent of out the frying pan into the fire. Chelsea and Lyon are synonymous in that way.
Pressure and expectation as respective serial champions are constant bedfellows. And yet the Women's Super League is a notoriously tough hunting ground for new coaches. No manager in the competition's history has ever won it in their first season. There have only ever been five overall winners. Now six.
In truth, Bompastor inherited a squad packed with players who know what it takes to win and win consistently. She's added a few more since - Lucy Bronze, Keira Walsh and the game's most expensive signing Naomi Girma among them.
Is it any surprise, then, that she has achieved what no newcomer before her managed? Sky Sports assesses the merits of the Frenchwoman's first season and her rapid rise to 'Sonia the Conqueror'.
More records tumble
Chelsea matched the longest unbeaten streak in all competitions by a WSL team with their 31-game run between May last year and mid-March. The streak equalled a record set by the Londoners themselves between April 2019 and September 2020 under Hayes.
A win rate so phenomenal, so remarkable, that football has almost become numb to it. Chelsea have been so good for so long domestically this latest triumph is simply a continuation of the natural order, and yet to accept the fact as ordinary would be to do Bompastor a disservice.
To suggest any title win is easy or painless, even for Chelsea, is to miss what makes it so special. Because no manager waltzes into a new club in a new country, having never managed abroad, and waves a magic wand.
"Starting the season, I was not expecting us to be in the position to achieve it with two games left," Bompastor reflected on Wednesday, after beating Man United 1-0 to seal the deal. "Some people think because you are Chelsea it's so easy to do that, but it's not."
The performance may have underwhelmed but its significance was quite the opposite. This is the earliest the title has been decided since 2018-19, as Chelsea remain on course to become the first WSL side unbeaten across a 22-game season. Imagine it, an invincible in year one.
Bompastor's task was far from simple. Like Hayes, she cherishes detail. A plan needed devising for every game, an idea that's different from the week before and the week before that. A motive for each player that starts and an incentive for each player that does not. A way to win without Sam Kerr. A scheme to disarm rivals.
Chelsea have beaten Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United home and away, a feat never achieved under Hayes, nor in the club's illustrious history.
But the problem with such a persistent cycle of dominance is that expectation to reach perfect verges on impossible. Defender Bronze described Chelsea's campaign as "up and down" this week, which is the equivalent of a tennis player winning in straight sets but dropping a game here and there. It's true Chelsea have not been perfect.
They dipped against Leicester and again against Brighton and then West Ham, unexpectedly dropping points in all three. They were only OK on the night they were crowned champions. Standards matter at Stamford Bridge. But league titles matter more and this latest one - Bompastor's first - should taste just as sweet as the five before it.
Total football on ice - for now
Bompastor promised a lot upon her arrival at Chelsea. Plenty she has already delivered on.
The gap between the champions and the rest is arguably bigger than it has been for years in WSL terms. No team can match Chelsea over a 22-game campaign. Not right now anyway. Two trophies banked, one FA Cup final to contest in May.
Where question marks remain, though, is over the style. Bompastor's pledge to play a possession-based brand of football that inspires and intrigues simultaneously remains a work in progress. Bompastor's Chelsea have won eight WSL games by a single goal this term - only two of 18 wins under Hayes last year were decided by a one-goal margin.
There are, of course, very few teams who can marry the art of total football with consistent results but that has to be the next step on the scale of evolution. Few teams ever reach peak greatness without it.
Bompastor favours patient build-up, short passes, intricate combinations, give-and-gos that mean the ball is always moving, if not always forwards. Chelsea of old are were far more vertical and old habits die hard.
Under Bompastor, they average slightly more possession with better passing accuracy, but forward passes per 90 minutes are fewer. They press higher, too, forcing more frequent and higher turnovers but have lacked a killer in front of goal in the absence of Kerr.
Being schooled by Barcelona in the Champions League last week simply underlined that point. Barca were everything Bompastor wants her side to be, packed with pass-masters who can spray the ball from left to right, up and down, mix short with long. The alignment was so slick. Barca completed 568 passes to Chelsea's 326 in a demoralising 4-1 win.
Pretty football - the kind that stirs up Europe - stays on the nice-to-have list, then, but must move up the priority list in year two.
Europe - the one that got away
The WSL has always been the bread and butter. Anything more is to be considered a nice extra. Except Chelsea's bread has been buttered for so long it's beginning to taste stale.
What the club wants, what its fanbase demands, what the players really crave, is a genuine run at European glory.
Bronze, Walsh, Girma, Mayra Ramirez, Sandy Baltimore - all these world-renowned stars were targeted to further the Champions League cause. The forbidden fruit. The one competition even the great Hayes could not charm.
And yet Barcelona's latest demolition job - an 8-2 triumph over two legs - served only to reemphasise the gulf in class between the WSL's best and Europe's elite.
The cruel reality of losing to Barca for the fourth time in the last five seasons was humbling. This season's instalment saw the biggest margin of victory between winner and loser of all those meetings. Perhaps that says more about the distinction of the Spanish side than it does about the plight of Chelsea but it'll be of little comfort to Bompastor, a three-time Champions League winner herself (twice as a player, once as coach).
And because so many eggs were placed in the Europe basket, this campaign, one where a domestic treble is a very real possibility, is tinged with an element of regret. Maybe even failure. The fact rivals Arsenal will feature in the final in Lisbon next month after overcoming Lyon is salt in the wound too.
Bompastor won't hide, though. "I'm not going to shy away from the ambitions of the club," she said. "I want to assume them and this club has everything to perform to make the quadruple. We're all sad and frustrated about it."
It clearly pained the Blues boss to see her team so comprehensively torn apart, albeit by the best in the business. Barcelona are quite obviously the gold standard, compelling to watch with conviction to match. If ever there was a formula to follow, it's surely that.