Tottenham Women 2-3 Chelsea Women
If Beth England scores against Chelsea, she's not going to celebrate! That was the curious nugget revealed by a member of Tottenham's backroom staff ahead of Spurs Women's clash with the Blues at Brisbane Road last weekend.
And intriguingly, events unfolded exactly as predicted.
The striker, who spent seven years at Chelsea and now leads the line for Spurs, fired home from close range after being set up by another ex-Blue, Drew Spence, but remained respectfully expressionless, to the admiration of a large and boisterous contingent of away fans.
The Blues just had enough in the tank to leave Leyton Orient's ground with all three points after a 3-2 victory – although it was getting hairy towards the end after Tottenham scored their second of the afternoon at the death.
From Emma Hayes' perspective, this was a ground-out win rather than a convincing one. "I thought it was a scrappy game," she said, partly blaming the threadbare pitch which had hosted Orient's men the day before. "You have to grind out a result, but this is all about the three points."
Chelsea opened the game brightly having made just one change (Sophie Ingle instead of Fran Kirby) to the starting XI from the previous week's 3-2 cup win against Liverpool.
Erin Cuthbert lobbed a cross into the Spurs box after eight minutes following Guro Reiten's short corner kick to Lauren James, and Jess Carter was at the far post to beat Tinja-Riikka Korpela, who had bright, low winter sun in her eyes.
Tottenham snapped at Chelsea's heels throughout the game, and it was no great surprise when, eight minutes later, Spence and England combined to carve open the Blues' defence and level.
But player-of-the-match James went on a superb solo run after 27 minutes, weaving through Spurs' midfield and then defence before slotting home a simply magnificent goal to make it 1-2 at halftime.
Was Hayes thrilled? "Yes, it was a fantastic goal, but she still has to work on some other things; she needs to keep developing," said the Chelsea manager, remaining realistic with half the season still remaining.
The Blues extended their lead to 1-3 after the break, thanks to Reiten's swift breakaway run down the centre, until Tottenham sub Nikola Karczewska made life interesting right at the death by clawing back another goal.
Chelsea Women don't play another WSL game until early March following this week's Conti Cup visit to West Ham.
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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