Chelsea Women 1-0 Manchester United Women
After lifting the FA Cup for the third year on the trot, Chelsea Women must keep their foot pressed to the floor as Arsenal visit Kingsmeadow on Sunday.
A famous league and cup double is within their grasp, but the Gunners will do all in their power to thwart Emma Hayes’ girls.
The tight, tense Wembley cup final last weekend saw Sam Kerr score the only goal in the balmy north London sunshine to prevent Manchester United winning their first trophy.
United manager Marc Skinner said his team “switched off for a moment” and were punished. It came in the 68th minute... a quarter of an hour after astute substitutions by Hayes saw Pernille Harder replace Jessie Fleming, and Sophie Ingle come on in place of Melanie Leupolz.
A long throw-in from Eve Perisset bypassed the United midfield, allowing Guro Reiten to feed the advancing Harder. She squared the ball to Kerr, who fired the ball home with the outside of her right boot... a shot so fraught with miskicking potential that Hayes later said it gave her and the Chelsea coaching staff the heebie jeebies.
Game management
What followed, as the Blues saw out the remaining quarter of the match with a model exercise in professional game management, has to be seen in the context of playing three matches a week for the past month with a squad on the brink of exhaustion.
Yet Hayes knows that good results against Arsenal this weekend and Reading next, in the final match of the season, could crown Coronation year with a double triumph at a time when the improved standards of all Women’s Super League sides make such attainments more and more difficult.
“We’ve trained for doing that,” said the Blues gaffer after receiving her winner’s medal from Prince William, confirming that skilful management of the dying stages of a match is a mini artform in itself.
Hayes dedicated the cup victory to Chelsea’s long-suffering fans, who have endured a torrid season as the men’s side, shorn of confidence and bedevilled by managerial and ownership changes, have fallen well short of expectation.
“This team will just dig and dig and dig,” said Hayes of her team’s performance after weathering all-out assaults by United’s Leah Galton, Nikita Parris and Alessia Russo in a first half which left her frustrated and concerned.
But it was, Hayes revealed, central defender Maren Mjelde who delivered the killer team talk at half-time in the Wembley dressing room, focusing her team-mates on the task ahead and inspiring a turnabout in the second 45 minutes.
Backflip
When Kerr stabbed home the only goal, the blue end of the stadium (rocking with 77,390 spectators) erupted in a flurry of flag-waving and cheering which intensified as the Aussie striker celebrated with her special-occasion cartwheel and backflip routine.
“I’ve never coached a player like Kerr – such confidence, conviction and courage,” said Hayes. “Kerr is so alive to situations, but without Pernille she wouldn’t have got that goal.”
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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