Lauren James is a world-class talent who doesn't deserve vile abuse - but Chelsea and England star does need to learn how to calm her petulant side down

As the clock ticked into the 70th minute on Sunday, there were few that saw any way back for Chelsea. The Blues were 3-1 down at the Emirates Stadium, they had been since half-time, and they were not really giving Arsenal much reason to believe that the win was in doubt. It was a frustrating afternoon for the reigning Women's Super League champions, and it was very close to getting even worse.

That frustration was clearly bothering Lauren James, and when she fouled Arsenal defender Lotte Wubben-Moy while winning a header, she did something in the aftermath that could’ve seen her dismissed there and then. After coming down from the aerial duel, she moved towards the ball, which had bounced towards Lia Walti and was being picked up by the Swiss international, and left her foot in on her opponent.

There wasn’t much fuss about it at first. Walti drew attention to the action, which saw James drag her boot down the midfielder's shin and onto her foot, though probably did the England star a favour by not making more of it. Otherwise, apart from the referee spotting it and booking the Chelsea star, no one seemed to bat an eyelid.

But when the replay came through, the ‘oooo’ from former England defender Gilly Flaherty, on co-commentary duties for BBC Sport for this game, said it all. "That's what we're talking about with Lauren James,” she said. “We saw it at the World Cup. It's those things that you do off the ball, where it's the frustration, you don't need to do that, you really don't. That's deliberate; it's not accidental. She just doesn't need to do it."

And that’s exactly it. James has done this before, when she saw red at the World Cup earlier this year for deliberately stepping on Nigeria’s Michelle Alozie in England’s last-16 clash in Brisbane. It almost cost her team that day, with the Lionesses needing to hang on and get through a penalty shootout to beat the African nation.

The feeling and the comments at the time were that James would learn from the incident. Indeed, she herself said she would. So why did it happen again on Sunday?