Chelsea Ladies booked their place in the semi finals of the FA Cup with a comfortable away victory against Liverpool Ladies. The Blues made light work of Liverpool in testing conditions with the freezing cold and random outbursts of snow, but they were the only threats they faced as they stopped Liverpool ever gaining a foothold within the game.
Carly Telford resumed her duties as cup goalkeeper for the Blues while January signing Jonna Andersson took the place of recently departed Crystal Dunn on the left side of defence. Emma Hayes decided to rest Ji So-Yun and Fran Kirby and replaced them with Eniola Aluko and Erin Cuthbert, who was fresh from scoring for Scotland on international duty. Liverpool entered the game with news this week that defender Amy Turner would miss the rest of the season through injury while captain Gemma Bonner was also absent.
The opening exchanges saw both teams alternate in keeping possession of the ball without making to many inroads. It would take a piece of skill to truly open up the game and Ramona Bachmann duly obliged; she skipped past a couple of Liverpool defenders to open up a bit of space on the left, she played the ball to Drew Spence who crossed it for Jonna Andersson to coolly finish.
The rest of the half again took the trend of both teams having sustained minutes of possession without doing much apart from having long range efforts which were comfortably dealt with by both keepers. Liverpool would have been content to go in at the break only a goal down and being able to regroup. Unfortunately for them, Chelsea’s captain Katie Chapman had other ideas. On the brink of half time, Chapman bravely rose to nod in a Magdalena Eriksson free kick to double the visitors’ lead.
The second half started quietly without much goal mouth action and the game was ended as a contest on the hour mark when Gemma Davison strode confidently into the box but was upended by a Liverpool defender. The ref pointed to the penalty spot and Norwegian Maren Mjelde confidently put the penalty away.
As the game approached its ending, both teams accepted their fates and looked to their important future fixtures as they substituted their key players and the final whistle blew with Chelsea being confirmed as FA Cup semi-finalists for the second year in a row.
This fixture was the only quarter final that was able to go ahead this weekend due to the adverse weather conditions; this means Chelsea will have to wait a while before finding out who they will face in the last four.
Player of the Match: Katie Chapman (Chelsea) – Chelsea’s captain put in a leading display as she influenced the game from the middle of the park. Got the goal just before half time with a fantastic header and could have scored another header later on.
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