West Ham Women succumbed to this season’s second heaviest defeat after losing 8-0 to Chelsea Women at Kingsmeadow.
Braces from Maren Mjelde and Bethany England were the pick of the bunch for Chelsea who overtake Arsenal as the top scorers in this season’s Women’s Super League.
Second Best
West Ham were far from favourites when they made their trip to Kingsmeadow to take on high flying Chelsea, but what unravelled would have been unexpected for even the most optimistic Chelsea fan.
In front of a crowd of just over 3,000, Chelsea put eight goals past a lacklustre West Ham as they remain unbeaten in their pursuit of the WSL title.
Ramona Bachman, Erin Cuthbert, Emily Murphy, Maren Mjelde, Bethany England and Sophie Ingle all found the net for Chelsea, and it could have been even more if it wasn’t for a few moments of quality from West Ham keeper Courtney Brosnan.
“We’re desperately disappointed and we’re embarrassed with the score line” said West Ham coach, Matt Beard. “It shouldn’t happen at this level, but you see the top three – Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City – do this a lot to teams.”
“The resources and the players they’ve got, and the players they brought off the bench when they were in complete control of the game, it’s frustrating. We shouldn’t get beat that way. We’ve got better players than the score line suggests and what our performance suggests.”
Weakened Squad
West Ham, who only had one shot on target in the game, were hindered by some forced omissions from the squad, including Adriana Leon and Cho So-Hyun who were both on international duty, and striker Martha Thomas, who missed the game through an injury.
Although key players were missing, it is hard to account Sunday’s performance to this factor, and West Ham cannot use it as an excuse for the heavy defeat.
Matt Beard spoke to the club’s website on the importance of his missing players. “I’ve lost Leon and Cho to Olympic qualification, and then Martha Thomas does her knee. We can’t catch a break with certain things, but the result is frustrating.”
Tough Schedule
This winter period hasn’t been kind to West Ham who have found this Chelsea game sandwiched in between last week’s FA Cup defeat to Arsenal and next week’s home fixture against top of the league Manchester City.
The Hammers have a lot to do over the next week in lieu of this performance if they want to get anything out of the Man City game next week. They lost the away fixture 5-0 and are coming into this at a tough time in their calendar.
Beard added: “At the end of the day, we didn’t deserve anything today. The players have got to react and respond. We can’t let this happen again”
Chasing Pack
West Ham end this game week where they started, in eighth place. However, both wins from Brighton and Liverpool looks to be building pressure during this tough period.
Brighton now sit a single point below West Ham, and with West Ham’s upcoming schedule, it may be hard to fend off the chasing pack for the next few weeks.
West Ham will be looking to find some consistency down the home stretch to secure their place in the WSL.
