Sonia Bompastor was pleased her team found a way to win yet again as we progressed to the semi-finals of the Women's FA Cup, but would like the Blues to be more clinical moving forward.
Despite dominating the match from start to finish when we hosted Crystal Palace in the quarter-finals, it took over an hour for Lauren James to find the only goal of the game with a fine strike into the bottom corner.
We had two goals disallowed, for Aggie Beever-Jones and Catarina Macario, as well as other chances we weren't able to capitalise on to make the result safe earlier on. However, Bompastor underlined that getting the victory is the most important thing, especially in knockout football, even if she would like to see Chelsea return to the free-scoring form we showed earlier in the season.
'The main thing for us is we always find a way to win the game,' said our head coach. 'It’s never easy to win games, even if sometimes you are the best team and the other team are underdogs.
'The big difference between us and the other teams at the moment is that we’ve been able to win games even when it’s tough and difficult. The most important thing in football is just to win.
'I think you can see from the statistics of the game we created so many opportunities and chances and we could have been more clinical and efficient. Today we couldn’t score more than one.
'One was enough, so it’s good, but if you look at the statistics from the game we had 12 shots in the first half, but only one on target. I think it’s not enough.
'At least the good point is that we created a lot, so I’m not concerned, and now we just need to be clinical in those moments. But it’s never easy to score goals.'
Bompastor also discussed James' match-winning performance...
'She was the one today who was able to score, but I think all the team worked hard to make sure she was in that situation,' added Sonia.
'It’s really good to have LJ when she’s able to make that impact on the game, that is why she’s so special.
'Maybe today we could have scored more goals with Aggie, Cat and other players. LJ was the one who made the difference but it was a team performance.'
She explained the thinking behind her two half-time substitutions and those which followed...
'Coming into every game we have different plans. Today the plan was first of all to make sure we were able to win the game, but also, depending on the situation, to be able to rotate the squad a little bit.
'So that decision was about rotating the squad, giving an opportunity to some players to have some minutes in the game.
'But there were also some tactical changes, particularly around the No10 position. I felt that we had spaces between the lines and we couldn’t hurt Palace the way we wanted.'
Sonia concluded by looking ahead to our FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool...
'The main thing for me is the draw allows us to play a home game, that is the most important thing for me.
'But you could see today it was a tough game against Palace, who are in the bottom half of the league, so these cup games always bring you a hard job.
'It will be a tough game against Liverpool, but at least we are at home, don’t have to travel and will have the support of our fans.'