Chelsea Women host Aston Villa at Kingsmeadow this weekend, keen to put behind them the bewilderment at their dreadful showing in the second half of the Conti Cup final.
Talk about a game of two halves! The Blues were cruising at the interval at Plough Lane, with players seemingly confident that their 1-0 lead over Man City would be a platform to build on in the second 45-minute spell.
As the army of Chelsea fans applauded them off to the changing rooms, the girls in Royal blue were chatting, joshing and looking relaxed.
Then City raced out after the interval and blew them away. Manager Emma Hayes said a cumulative tiredness coupled with the number of absentees may have been to blame, but there’s a nagging suggestion it might have been complacency.
The Blues are used to winning. If they’re leading at half-time they confidently expect to finish the job.
Yet City eclipsed and outclassed the girls from Kingsmeadow, and Chelsea Women had no answer to City’s grit and determination as the Sky Blues finally ended a long jinx and lifted the Conti Cup – denying Hayes a third trophy on the trot.
Player of the match Caroline Weir scored twice, while Ellen White was also on the scoresheet, wiping out Sam Kerr’s balletic spin-and-shoot in the 34th minute.
The Blues looked leaden-footed, uncoordinated and simply sluggish in attack as City turned the screw and never looked back.
A disheartened Hayes paced her technical area, tried to shake things up with substitutions, but was powerless. “Momentum is so difficult to coach against; it’s the hardest thing,” said Hayes. “All of a sudden the game’s drifting in another direction, and that’s how football is. Sometimes it works in your favour, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
The goal that killed off the game came from a Georgia Stanway corner, headed back into the danger zone by Lucy Bronze and ineffectively cleared by Sophie Ingle. The advancing Weir waited for her moment, then raced into the box to volley home as Ann-Katrin Berger stood rooted to the spot.
Chelsea need to face up to some serious questions, not least about Berger’s reliability which was shown up by Hemp (switching wings and being just as effective on both), the wholehearted Stanway, White and Hayley Raso.
Chelsea had started as favourites, having pipped City three times already this season. But in the cold evening air, as a continuous misty rain swept the stadium, it was the Blues that lacked the pace, resolve and pressing that City produced in abundance.
England manager Sarina Wiegman, watching from the stands, would have found little to excite her among her Chelsea internationals, with Millie Bright simply off the boil and Jess Carter caught out by superior attackers. Only Niamh Charles provided any positives.
But on the City side, every English player excelled. It felt as if City had been saving up all their energies for the breathless second half of cup-final football to which the Blues had no answer.
Hayes’ City counterpart Gareth Taylor thought his team had been “magnificent” – and few in the 8,000-strong crowd would have disagreed.
Villa visit Kingsmeadow on Sunday lunchtime – a match which clashes with the men’s encounter with Newcastle at Stamford Bridge.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and unless specifically stated are not necessarily those of Hammersmith & Fulham Council.
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