After Chelsea Women overcame the traditional tactical challenge posed by playing opponents shown a red card early in a game, Emma Hayes discussed players making their first starts or scoring their first goal, while also revealing Lauren James missed the game due to injury.
The Blues beat Aston Villa 3-0 in Wednesday evening’s game at Kingsmeadow, moving back to the top of the WSL table on goal difference. Our manager made seven changes after the semi-final defeat to Manchester United at the weekend and after Villa had their goalkeeper dismissed inside five minutes, two of the players brought in, Aggie Beever-Jones and Maika Hamano, scored, as did one who played both games, Kadeisha Buchanan.
‘Most players will tell you the hardest times to play with games accumulations are directly after international breaks, so I thought the group that started tonight were the freshest yesterday in training,’ Hayes said on the subject of her team selection.
‘It's a challenge playing against 10. You have to be more patient and in the second half, I didn't think we were patient enough. We just wanted to go direct whereas the first half we were a little more patient. When you play against 10 you think you've got to be in a hurry and sometimes it just needs the extra pass or not to play the first pass.’
That said, our manager was satisfied with the outcome and had particular praise for Catarina Macario after her first start for Chelsea on her ninth appearance, and Hamano who like Buchanan, netted her first goal for the club.
‘I'm really pleased with Cat,’ Hayes declared. ‘We've been patient for good reason and you can see she's ready by the performance tonight. We’ve just got to build on it. She's gone away with her national team and her game minutes have certainly gone up this week. We just have to remain cautious about it but keep progressing.
‘Maika put in a super performance. For someone who hasn't played a lot football she showed an unbelievable amount of energy and work-rate. She showed her qualities. She's going to be a really big player for Chelsea's future and she also can do it in Chelsea's present. The squad is so happy for her. She's a lovely individual.’
The Japan international was part of an entirely changed attack. Lauren James was one those replaced.
‘She was unavailable,’ reported Hayes, ‘as well as Jelena Cankovic who was sick this morning. Lauren is injured.
‘She wasn’t training yesterday. I won't see her tomorrow [a day off] and I don't know what state she'll be in on Friday but I will get a call usually from the medical team to give me an update the following day on anybody who hasn't been available for selection.’
Friday will be the final training session before the squad departs for Spain and the first leg against Barcelona.
‘I look forward to every game,’ said Hayes. ‘Of course everybody wants to be in the Champions League semi-final but we don’t have much time to think too hard about it. We had to try to win in the league first and our brains can now switch to the Champions League so it’s rest first, then we think about Friday and what we need to deliver in training. Then we go and play the first half. That's all it is, the first half.’