EMMA HAYES said it won’t be difficult to get over Saturday’s FA Cup defeat to Arsenal as her Chelsea side are more focused on the bigger picture.
The Blues were striving to retain the FA Cup but failed to turn up for the occasion, with Hayes saying she was disappointed with the team’s complacency. However, she was quick to point out that the team can still have a fantastic season with three trophies still to play for.
She said: “As I keep reminding the players, it’s a journey over the course of a season and we will have disappointments and it happens to be the disappointment this week is in an FA Cup final at Wembley. We are playing for multiple trophies, this is one down and there are an awful lot of teams who will want to be in this position.”
“Beyond that we are aware that we are competing for the league, for the [League] cup and working towards a bigger progression in the Champions League so it won’t be difficult [to lift the players]because that is the culture we have built here and that is what our expectation is.”
Arsenal were billed as the underdogs before the match but ended it as pitbulls, such was their domination for 90 minutes. Given the squad Hayes has built at Chelsea and way in which they dispatched Arsenal 2-0 a few weeks ago in the Women’s Super League, many were expecting a routine victory for the west Londoners.
This wasn’t the case and from the first minute, Pedro Martinez Losa’s side had the Blues on the back foot. Fran Kirby had Chelsea’s best chance of the match with the score at 1-0 but in truth, the Gunners could have won the match by three goals and Hayes believes that people shouldn’t be surprised by how good this Arsenal side is given how much money has been spent assembling this team.
“I think you have to look at the cap assimilation of that team and how much experience they have. Yes they may be gelling with eight, nine new players but it’s not like they are coming from WSL2. They have been playing in top teams for quite some time.
“So no it’s not a surprise.”
*Originally published in Morning Star Daily – England
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