Lincoln Ladies 2-0 Chelsea Ladies

After a short break for the Euro 2013 qualifiers which for England included a fine 2-0 home win over Holland and a 4-0 away battering of Slovenia, it was back to the bread and butter stuff of the WSL action this weekend as Lincoln Ladies welcomed Chelsea Ladies to Ashby Avenue. Although Lincoln have recorded a couple of wins in the cup this season at home, they are yet to gain a home win in the league this season. Having drawn with Birmingham 2-2, Arsenal 3-3 and suffered a 1-2 defeat to Doncaster so far.
The league is starting to settle down and three points for Lincoln would get them back into the bunch of clubs just above them (one being Chelsea) on 8 points. A defeat for the Imps would leave them looking over their shoulders at the bottom two Doncaster and Liverpool.
Beating Chelsea is easier said than done though as they are having a decent season. The highpoint for them i would say was beating Arsenal in the FA Cup semi final and they were only seconds away from lifting the trophy until a late Birmingham equaliser denied them before the lost they lost on penalties.
They are however the league's entertainers; having scored the most goals but also let a few in. Lincoln have also scored and conceded a fair few, so it had all the makings of a highly entertaining game.The sides had already met once this season when Lincoln gained a good 2-1 away win on matchday one of the continental cup.

In truth what we actually got was a classic case of a game of two halves. Jess was still out injured so Carla Cantrell and Precious Hamilton again led the line up front for the Imps. In Casey Stoney (a former Chelsea player) and Sophie Bradley, Lincoln had the same centre back pairing that had kept clean sheets for England in the past week, and with them now playing a handful of games together this season i hoped that we would see a much more solid back line for the Imps than we had  in recent weeks.

Normally i go behind the goal that Lincoln attack but because we had the rare occurrence of a sunny day in Lincs i chose to stand behind the goal Lincoln were defending as it is the open end of the ground. As it turned out it was the best choice as most of the action was at that end. Chelsea seemed to be quicker to the ball and had more of the play in the first half. The blues seemed to be most dangerous down their left hand side. This meant that Sophie Walton had to be on the top of her game but she was more than up to the task, with Remi Allen helping out to cover the back four. The two of them scrapped like mad in the first half and stopped the Chelsea attack in its tracks. Although the visitors had more of the ball they didn't really make Nic in the Lincoln goal make a save. Chelsea thought they were in when a misplaced cross from Casey Stoney was picked up by Chelsea but Sophie Bradley was there to help her partner out.

 One of the problems for Lincoln was that the front two were coming back to defend which meant that when we got the ball back our strikers were in our own half so it made it hard to exert some pressure of our own when we won the ball back.
Chelsea missed the best chance of the game when one of the strikers missed a decent chance when a ball fell to one of the strikers following a corner, but thankfully from a Lincoln point of view she flicked it over the bar with the outside of her boot. After that chance Lincoln settled a bit more and spent more time in the opposition's half, although neither side created a clear cut chance. Lincoln gained a few free kicks after some uncompromising Chelsea tackles but Lucy Stainforth's deliveries into the box failed to create a chance for the Imps.
I was glad when halftime arrived as it gave manger Glen Harris time to reassess the situation and work out a way to get the Lincoln midfield on the ball more and play in the Chelsea half alot more.

Glen Harris deep in thought

It was a cagey opening to the second half as both sides looked to keep the ball much better than in the first period. Lincoln won a free kick inside the first minute but Collette McCallum fired her free kick straight at the keeper. A few minutes later the comedy moment of the match arrived, when Rachel Daley managed to hack the ball clear and sent it into Remi Allen's head, but she was soon up and raring to go again.
A game changing moment happened in the 60th minute. Chelsea gained a free kick about 25 yards out and Danielle Buet stepped up to take it. It was a great effort that crashed against the bar and was cleared to safety; it was a cracking free kick but i am sure that Nic would have had it covered if the ball was on target.

Chelsea were ruing that about five minutes later when Carla Cantrell latched onto a through ball and chipped the ball over the advancing Telford in the Chelsea goal to give the Imps the lead. Normally when a side goes behind you get a response but in this case it seemed to fire the Imps up even more. Precious had a couple of chances to put the game to bed and we even got a sight of centre back Stoney getting forward and slinging in a decent cross. Katie Rood was introduced into the action and she harassed the Chelsea defence and didn't allow them to settle. With the clock ticking down and the Imps manager shouting at the side to keep the ball Cantrell put the game to bed, when instead of taking the ball to the corner decided to cut inside and fire in a shot which hit the inside of the post and went in to give Lincoln a 2 goal lead and the three points. And it was a crucial three points as this win lifted the Imps up to third place in the table, three points behind Birmingham who are in the second Champions League spot. It has to be said though that four clubs (Lincoln, Bristol, Everton, and Chelsea ) are all on 8 points and only separated on goal difference.

The talking point in the aftermath of the game was regarding some of the comments made by the Chelsea management team in the official match report on the WSL site. I have read it and will give you my views on certain things that he said.

"Lincoln are not a better side than us in my opinion"

(Lincoln have now beaten Chelsea twice this season, once home, once away)

"They didn't win a corner all game and that shows you what kind of side they are"

Goals win games not corners. Not forcing corners doesn't mean you are negative. Could it be that most of our shots were on target and the keeper held them instead of putting them out for a corner?

He also made a reference to Lincoln "not being great upfront". I will agree that we didn't create many chances today but the ones that we did create we took, and how many other sides have knocked 7 goals in two games past League leaders Arsenal? We have only scored two goals less than Chelsea in the League this season and have had our most dangerous player out through injury for the past month or so.

I understand that football is an emotional game and things do sometime get said in the heat of the moment but this kind of stuff does few favours for anybody. What it has done is written Glen Harris' team talk for the away game with Chelsea, and if twitter is anything to go by the girls will be pretty fired up for that one. A bus load of angry fired up women isn't something i would want to experience.

On a much happier note i just want to say a big well done to Meaghan Sargeant who now goes away with the England U19's for their European championship in Turkey. This does mean that the Imps will miss her for a couple of games but it does mean she will get a decent tan and hopefully help England to win the championship.

Meaghan Sargeant

And on the same theme its great to see both Casey Stoney and Sophie Bradley called up to represent Team GB in the Olympics later this summer. I have no doubt that you will both do your club and country proud.

291 witnessed the game today. Lets see if we can beat that next week against Bristol on Saturday