Man City inflict first defeat of the season on Chelsea
Nick Cushing recorded his first win upon returning to Man City in the Champions League
As Manchester City and Chelsea faced English opposition for the first time in the Champions League, a Vivianne Miedema-double handed Nick Cushing his first win upon returning.
Chelsea came into the game unbeaten across all competitions but an inspired Miedema and Kerolin display was too much for the Blues to handle.
Miedema showed her class with two composed finishes, the first one on the volley before sweeping beyond the diving Hampton in the dying minutes of the match.
what happened
We looked to make home advantage count in the opening exchanges with Jill Roord winning the ball high up in the Chelsea half, before teeing up Kerolin Nicoli to try her luck from distance, but her effort flew narrowly over the bar.
Lily Murphy then got her first chance to run at Lucy Bronze just before the half-hour mark when we denied a Chelsea counter-attack, but after cutting inside, her curling effort was well held by Hannah Hampton.
Moments later the visitors carved open their first chance through a wicked Lauren James cross, but Macario’s diving header at the near post failed to trouble Ayaka Yamashite.
An opening goal was what we were after as we began the second half in the same high-intensity fashion when Kerolin broke quickly and fed in Miedema whose cutback was controlled and dragged wide by Kerstin Casparij.
We finally got our well-deserved opening goal right on the stroke of the hour mark thanks to Miedema.
A series of crosses and corners were whipped into the Chelsea area and never cleared by the visitors and after Hampton tipped Aleixandria’s header onto the crossbar, Miedema was on hand to volley into the roof of the net and hand us the lead.
Our number six was causing all sorts of problems following her introduction at the break. She had Mille Bright back-pedalling towards her box from the halfway line, but her dipping outside-the-box effort was well kept out by Hampton.
As the game crept into the final 10 of the 90 minutes, Chelsea came within a width of the crossbar to level the match when Johanna Rytting Kaneryd cannoned one off the woodwork from an acute angle.
Wieke Kaptein managed to find herself in acres of space behind the backline but while her shot bounced awkwardly in front of Yamashite, she scooped the ball away from the danger area.
Chelsea simply could not deal with our number six in the second half as she doubled her and our own tally for the evening.
It all came about when Kerolin was direct down the right and ran at the Chelsea defence before cutting the ball back to Miedema who took one touch onto her left foot and stroked the ball beyond Hampton into the bottom right corner.
HOW WE LINED up
Nick Cushing made three changes from the Subway Cup final defeat on Saturday with Aoba Fujino and Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw missing out through injury.
The back five of City were unchanged from the weekend with Laia Aleixandria continuing to lead from the back.
Yui Hasegawa sat just in front of the back four, allowing Jill Roord and Jess Park to venture further forward and support the front three of Lilly Murphy, Mary Fowler and Kerolin Nicoli.
City XI: Yamashite, Casparij, Prior, Aleixandri (C), Ouahabi, Hasegawa, Park (Blindkilde-Brown 75), Roord, Murphy (Miedema 46), Fowler (Coombs 64), Kerolin Nicoli (Layzell 89)
Subs: Keating, Startup, Wienroither
Chelsea XI: Hampton, Bronze, Bright, Bjorn, Baltimore, Cuthbert, Walsh (Nusken 58), Beever-Jones, Macario (Kaptein 46), James (Kaneryd 58), Ramirez (Hamano 72)
Subs: Spencer, Lawrence, Charles, Jean-Francois, Rytting, Fishel
up next
For the third time in just over a week, we’ll face Chelsea once again, this time in the Women’s Super League, at the Etihad Stadium.
Kick-off in the WSL is scheduled for 14:30 (UK), while next Thursday’s Champions League second leg is at Stamford Bridge with a 20:00 kick-off (UK).
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