Hard hit by injuries just like the men’s side, head coach Sonia Bompastor’s options for picking up Chelsea Women starting lineups have been very limited. The striker-less scheme worked against Manchester United but the often conservative boss in her tactical approach doesn’t seem like she wants to reinvent the wheel by doing it so twice.
Birmingham being a recently promoted Women’s Super League 2 team, they were hardly going to give Chelsea any trouble at Stamford Bridge. We were able to impose our
game against them from kick-off and only a few minutes later Lexi Potter got us the opening goal.
As always we could have left the pitch at half-time with four or more goals. But then we forget that opposing goalkeepers often decide to put on a workshop against us, which Sophie Baggaley did.
Chelsea weren’t really taking their foot off the gas pedal in the second half. But Birmingham were making it harder for us to get shots against their goal, while finding some space to infiltrate our defence from time to time. On two of those occasions they nearly got the equaliser, which would have been just as disastrous as the tying Aston Villa goal from two weeks ago.
That’s when the power of a true centre-forward came to a head. Melvine Malard, less than 10 minutes after coming from the bench, got the Blues a much needed second goal.
We could finally breath with a bit more room. But not too much because Chelsea couldn’t keep up the energy that made it seem like they were a whole different team in the first half. Luckily for us Birmingham didn’t have the quality upfront to make the most out of this.
Carefree!
- No Lauren James in the squad.
- Great chances went begging in the first half.
- You can’t beat having a real centre-forward on the pitch.
- Next up: Austria Wien at home in the Women’s Champions League.
- KTBFFH!
