Emma Hayes stressed that Chelsea's superb Women's Super League form is not coming easily after they won their sixth straight league match by thrashing Leicester 5-2.

The Blues were in sensational form in attack, with Lauren James scoring twice, but conceded twice to see 2-0 and 3-1 leads halved in size before taking the game away from the Foxes.

Hayes admitted that the WSL leaders became a little sloppy in defence but did not go too hard on her players.

She said: "It’s hard to keep going and going and always be the best team on the pitch at the best level.

"I don’t speak about it in great detail, but when you live this life you know how taxing it is — to keep producing performances and results.

"Maybe it was too good a start, there were two gifted goals for us. Sometimes you think it’s going to be one of those days.

"Almost every football match I’ve coached, going two goals up so early is a terrible scoreline in some respects because then you get sloppy."

The victory was Chelsea's 14th in their last 15 league matches, a run dating back to the beginning of April.

It is such form that left Leicester manager Willie Kirk philosophical rather than angry after his side's defeat.

The visitors were two goals down inside five minutes but rallied to make a game of things from then on.

Kirk said: "A start like the first five minutes was our worst nightmare and a lot of teams can crumble at that point.

"I think it shows a lot of resilience and a lot of strength in character to come back in that game and I’m proud we did that.

"Yet again we’ve been a threat to a big team, which is something we struggled with last year.

"But that’s the level a lot of our players are trying to get to. It’s a big lesson in terms of being clinical."