Chelsea Ladies can show Jose Mourinho the way... Women's Super League title win would be a perfect riposte after spat with former club doctor Eva Carneiro

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There was a decent crowd at the City Football Academy stadium in Manchester last Sunday. It was a beautiful autumn day and it felt as if there was much to be optimistic about. Manchester City played some dazzling football and overwhelmed Bristol Academy to keep their hopes of winning the Women’s Super League alive.

Jill Scott, one of the heroines of England’s run to the semi-finals of the World Cup in Canada earlier this year, scored the first goal. Steph Houghton, England’s captain during the tournament, was typically solid in the centre of defence. Lucy Bronze, the team’s best player in Canada, was close to flawless again.

City’s attitude to the women’s game is a model of the way forward, too. The women train at the same superb facilities as the men, they play at a stadium across the road from the Etihad, which has a perfect surface. It is a signpost to the future. 

Manchester City's Jill Scott runs with the ball during their Women’s Super League tie with Bristol Academy

Isobel Christiansen and Lucy Bronze celebrate after Manchester City scored in their win over Bristol Academy

Manchester City star Scott celebrates with fans at the end of the game against Bristol Academy

For the second year in succession, the WSL1 title will be decided on the final day of the season. City stayed within reach of Chelsea — another club with an excellent women’s set-up — with their win over Bristol Academy, but Chelsea will beat them to glory if they win at home against Sunderland on Sunday evening.

Maybe Jose Mourinho will turn up to watch. If he does, it will be one of the better decisions he has made in the last few months. It has been a momentous season for the women’s game in England but as it comes to a close on Sunday, it is being overshadowed by the ongoing row over former Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro and the messages it is sending about attitudes to women in football. 

Pick the most famous woman in football this season and it won’t be Scott or Bronze or even Chelsea’s Eniola Aluko. It should be but it won’t be. It will be Carneiro. Famous for being wronged by the game. And then abandoned by it. A bright, educated, successful woman at the top of her profession, humiliated by football for doing her job.

Carneiro’s treatment is a sign of the battle of attitudes towards women in football that is raging as fiercely as ever. There are still those who seek to ridicule every aspect of the sport as if it is unworthy. They mock attendances at WSL games and they mock the standard of play. Many, many men clearly feel deeply threatened by the women’s game.

Well, bad luck. Women’s football is starting to establish itself in this country. There can be no argument about that. The BBC’s coverage of the World Cup and the success of England’s women in it gave it a platform in the public’s wider consciousness that it has not had before here.

Sure, only one side of the Academy Stadium was full last Sunday but attendances are going up and so is the quality of play. The defending of Scotland’s Jennifer Beattie for City, for instance, was wonderfully imperious. Things, indisputably, are moving in the right direction in the women’s game in England. 

Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro and head physio Jon Fearn leave the bench to treat Chelsea's Eden Hazard

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has words with Carneiro after she ran on the pitch to treat Hazard

Former Chelsea doctor Carneiro claimed that the FA have 'chosen to ignore' evidence of sexism 

The FA took the decision not to pursue the allegations against Mourinho but they did not speak to Carneiro

But attitudes are not keeping up. Any comment about the women’s game on social media is met with a barrage of brainless abuse about what the women should be doing instead of playing football.

Too often, women are still made to feel like outsiders. Too often, they are made to feel as if they are encroaching on men’s territory. Too often, barriers are put in their way. Too often, they still have to fight to get involved rather than being welcomed in.

The Carneiro case, sadly, could scarcely be better designed to illustrate that point. One of the only high-profile women in the men’s game was publicly humiliated by Mourinho during Chelsea’s game against Swansea in August and, again, after it.

She was humiliated, let’s not forget, for doing her job. She and physio Jon Fearn were humiliated for responding to the referee’s instruction to go on to the field of play to treat an injured player, Eden Hazard. 

Chelsea's women will beat Manchester City to the title if they win at home against Sunderland on Sunday

Chelsea's Eniola Aluko pictured celebrating her goal during their recent Women's Super League win

The Women’s Super League title is to be decided on the final day of the season with Chelsea a win from glory

The most famous woman in football this season will not be Chelsea’s Aluko but their former doctor

They were humiliated during the match when Mourinho performed his dancing tantrum on the sideline and they were humiliated after the match. ‘If you are involved in the game then you have to understand the game,’ Mourinho said.

It was a withering put-down. It was aimed at Fearn and Carneiro but it was always going to have a more savage impact on Carneiro. Mourinho is a clever man. He must have known that. It played straight into the hands of the dinosaurs who have been telling us all along that women have no place in football.

That was reinforced on Friday when Carneiro released a statement that revealed quite how badly she had been treated by the game. It was a statement that spoke of alienation and abandonment by the authorities when she needed their support most.

Carneiro said that the Football Association had not sought evidence from her when they were investigating allegations that Mourinho had directed sexist abuse at her during the Swansea game. She also said that after she was subjected to ‘vile, unacceptable, sexually explicit abuse’ during a game at West Ham last season, the FA were made aware of the issue and, again, failed to act. 

Chelsea ladies can show Mourinho the way after his ongoing row with Carneiro sent wrong messages

Fran Kirby of Chelsea poses for a selfie with fans after signing autographs following their win in Liverpool

It would be wrong to ignore the fact that in recent years, the FA have worked harder and harder to promote the women’s game and help it grow. They continue to do that. There are many men and women within the organisation dedicated to helping the women’s game achieve more and more success.

Sadly, the FA now have a chairman, Greg Dyke, who is big on grandstanding but small on action. Dyke may have written a letter voicing mild disapproval of Mourinho’s treatment of Carneiro but his organisation bottled it when it came to the crunch.

It will take more than the Carneiro case to derail the growth of women’s football in this country now, though. In years to come, it may even be that we see what happened to her as a landmark in the struggle women in football had to gain respect.

Despite what happened to Carneiro, Sunday may yet be all about a great triumph for a team of women representing Chelsea. What a beautiful riposte that would be.

There were allegations that Mourinho had directed sexist abuse at Carneiro during the Swansea City game

It is getting to the point where it feels as if Arsene Wenger is addicted to the climb but afraid of what he will see when he reaches the summit. 

Arsenal are still a fine side to watch, of course, and yes they are improving, but the process is painfully slow and, increasingly, there are times when it feels as if the manager’s stubbornness is getting in the way. 

Not strengthening his midfield or attack in the summer are examples. So too was playing David Ospina instead of Petr Cech against Olympiacos on Tuesday night. Already this season, more than any other in the last few years, feels like a giant missed opportunity for Arsenal. 

Arsene Wenger's Arsenal welcome Manchester United to the Emirates Stadium on Sunday afternoon

Sponsors make Blatter call 10 years late

Let us not give any credit to FIFA’s craven sponsors for finally speaking out about Sepp Blatter. Ten years ago would have been nice. 

Ten years ago might have averted some of the damage. Ten years ago and maybe there would have been no Qatar 2022.

But to act then would have taken principle and courage. Instead, they have ridden Blatter’s coat-tails as assiduously as any acolyte, defacing World Cups with their commercial colonisation, pushing local culture to one side, de-Africanising the 2010 World Cup with their stifling homogeneity and all the while bankrolling Blatter’s diseased regime. 

For them to stab him now makes them look like opportunist assassins.

As far as his career is concerned, Blatter is dead already. 

The authorities are crawling all over him. And now, suddenly, the sponsors have decided it’s really about time that something was done. 

How awfully big and brave of them.

FIFA sponsors McDonald's and Coca-Cola have demanded that president Sepp Blatter resigns immediately 

The sponsors claim that Blatter's corruption allegations have irrevocably damaged FIFA's reputation