It’s only January and Chelsea Women can already claim their first shot at silverware, hinging on beating Manchester City in the upcoming Women’s League Cup semifinal.
This City are not like the one under
Gareth Taylor. With Andrée Jeglertz at helm they’ve only lost a single game. It does bode well for us that this very game was the season opener against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, in the Women’s Super League.
Can we do it all again, this time in their home turf?
Date / Time: Wednesday, January 21, 2025, 19.00 GMT; 2:00pm EST
Venue: Academy Stadium, Manchester, England
Forecast: Some rain and some wind
On TV: Sky Sports (UK); none (USA); elsewhere
Streaming: Sky GO, BBC iPlayer (UK); YouTube (int’l)
Manchester City team news: We all hoped City’s 2-1 loss to Chelsea back in September was a portent of things to come for us and for them. What we saw instead was a bad run of Women’s Super League matches for Chelsea that put the Blues in the uncomfortable position of chasing after the Mancunians, after growing so used to the exact opposite situation over the years.
Manager Andrée Jeglertz, who sees his team in a much different — and markedly better — place than they were when they lost to the Blues almost four months ago, might not be able to count on Kerolin. The Brazilian attacker had a small issue before their previous match in which they beat Bournemouth 6-0 in the Women’s FA Cup. Meanwhile players recovering from long-term injuries, such as Mary Fowler and Aoba Fujino, are still some days away from returning to the pitch.
Chelsea team news: The Blues had little to no difficulties brushing Crystal Palace aside in the Women’s FA Cup fourth round. We couldn’t watch or even hear the match on radio as it happened. But the replay shows the 5-0 scoreline in our favour could’ve been much worse for the visitors if goalkeeper Shae Yáñez wasn’t as sharp as she was last weekend.
Notably our match against Palace didn’t feature any of Aggie Beever-Jones, Catarina Macario, Keira Walsh and Niamh Charles as the quartet recovered from injury. Out of these four players, only Aggie is fit to be part of the squad this Wednesday.
Previously: Mayra Ramírez scores early, and Yui Hasegawa’s own goal put Chelsea back in front so we can lift our third ever League Cup trophy after three consecutive seasons as runners-up.
