While the fight for a Women’s Super League seems like an afterthought for Chelsea Women, that’s not the case for all other competitions the team are still in. Including the Women’s League Cup, in which they reached the final for a seventh consecutive time after beating Liverpool and Manchester City in the previous rounds.
In our match against Manchester United in the Women’s FA Cup fifth round last month the opposition at Ashton Gate today already showed a lot of grit. Today wouldn’t be any different.
This Red Devils team under Marc Skinner have taken the necessary steps to stay among the top of the crop in England, and they aren’t as afraid to bite as they were a couple of season ago.
However Chelsea do have a long-standing advantage over United in history. It’s a difficult burden to carry, especially when you allow players like Lauren James to score from a massive defensive mistake in a cup final.
United continued trying to bring things back to Chelsea’s defensive third and they got close to scoring a couple of times. Good work from Hannah Hampton and some luck (for us) with their finishing had us back in the dressing room with the slimmest of leads.
The pressure was on United to move the needle in their favour in the second half. Yet again Hampton had to hold the fort and keep us in the game as the opposition threw the kitchen sink at her and Chelsea’s backline.
It’s hard to keep up such intensity and United eventually felt the effects of it. That was the perfect time for Chelsea to kick up their gear and find a second goal via Aggie Beever-Jones on a great Johanna Rytting Kaneryd cross.
The Red Devils had a lot of time to try and make things harder for Chelsea. At the end of the day they didn’t have it in them.
Champions, baby! Carefree!
- Kadeisha Buchanan and Veerle Buurman as our centre-back pairing.
- You shouldn’t do that in front of Lauren James…
- Hope all is good with Nathalie Björn!
- One more trophy in the cabinet.
- Next up: Brighton at home in the Women’s Super League.
- KTBFFH
