Sam Kerr made her Chelsea debut and it was ... eventful

Sam Kerr’s blockbuster move to Chelsea — perhaps the biggest signing in the history of the Women’s Super League — may have been announced in November, but thanks to the British transfer system, we’ve had to wait until this year for her to make her debut for the Blues.

That debut came in a league match against Reading, and Kerr was thrown straight into the starting lineup. The striker was substituted in the 77th minute with her team 2-1 up, but managed to pack a truly silly amount of action into her time on the pitch. Let’s recap.

Given the chance to immediately open her account with the Blues after being played clean through on goal, Kerr produced an enormously un-Kerrian finish and blazed into the Kingsmeadow crowd instead. We’ll blame it on the nerves.

The visitors had taken a shock lead just seconds before an even more shocking tackle. The British sometimes call this sort of challenge ‘agricultural,’ presumably because it has the feel of a combine harvester trundling inexorably through a family of mice. Fortunately, Kerr’s feet weren’t set by the time Grace Moloney decided to do whatever it is that’s meant to be, so she was able to keep playing. And eventually ...

She turned up with the equaliser. And what an equaliser. Sure. Chelsea probably shouldn’t be very proud of being behind for so long at home against a team whose goalkeeper had been sent off, but the first goal of the Kerr era was worth the wait. The goal itself came off the right boot of Bethany England, which is a little surprising considering that it was England’s place that seemed most at risk with Kerr’s arrival, but that’s not to say that the new arrival wasn’t involved. Far from it:

That, readers, is a one-two taken to its purest possible form. A slick first-time pass between the a defender’s legs was met by the sort of backheel you can only pull off if you’re one of the top players in the world, and suddenly England was clean through, able to round the hitherto unbeatable Rachael Laws and slot home for 1-1.

Kerr would have preferred a debut goal to a debut assist, of course, but as debut assists go that backheel wasn’t half bad.

She didn’t get her goal in the second half, either. Instead, she found herself entirely upstaged by ...

Holy hell, Guro Reiten. Yes, this is a post about Sam Kerr, but right now Sam Kerr is mostly a vector to talk about Reiten’s glorious finish. Laws shut down Kerr one-on-one with a smart kicksave, but the rebound ballooned to Reiten, lurking just outside the box.

Most footballers would probably have opted to control and recycle the play with the goalkeeper stranded. Reiten was having none of that cowardly nonsense, producing a miraculous side-footed volley that met the ball as it was dropping from the sky and sent it on its way to the top corner with a lob of such delicacy that it might as well have been constructed by a team of crack horologists.

I honestly have no idea why Reiten tried this shot, let alone how she pulled it off with such astonishing panache. But I’m very glad she did.

Goalkeeper rebounds don’t count as assists in the official statistics, but I’m giving Kerr one in my heart anyway for setting up a truly jaw-dropping goal. The debutante was substituted a few minutes later, but it’s fair to say that she left her mark on the game. Two one-on-one misses, a brilliant backheel assist and a red card drawn? That’s not a bad way to introduce yourself to London.