Tottenham Hotspur Women welcome Chelsea to Brisbane Road tomorrow evening for the FA Women’s Continental League Cup quarter-finals, with the match kicking off at 7:45 PM BST and live on FA Player, a free streaming service for those who register online.
Having had their last scheduled fixture against Leicester City at Brisbane Road in the Women’s Super League called off on the weekend due to a frozen pitch, Spurs have been out of action for 10 days, and not since their 2-1 defeat at Walsall’s Bescot Stadium against Aston Villa.
On the day, recent arrival from Chelsea Beth England netted on her debut for the club, and Chelsea manager Emma Hayes spoke to Football.London about the prospect of facing one of her former strikers in tomorrow’s tie:
“She will put everything into her performance for her team and I’m sure she will want to score a goal as she’s always wanted to do and I expect nothing else from her.”
Hayes’ Chelsea are also coming off the back of a frustrating match abandonment, in which their match against Liverpool at the weekend was also called off five minutes after kick-off due to a frozen pitch. This left Chelsea manager Hayes with a bitter taste in her mouth, and led to her giving her opinion on the big talking point regarding women’s football this week – the need to take these matches more seriously when making decisions on abandoning or postponing matches.
Speaking to BBC Sport, Hayes voiced her frustrations at the abandonment of her side’s match at the weekend:
“We’ve got pitch covers and heaters that are designed to prevent frozen pitches. If they don’t do that job, then we have to have another solution,” said Hayes told BBC Sport.
“That’s not my job – that’s for the league and the clubs to sort so we never have to cancel games. I’ve said for years that cancelling games has a detrimental impact on our sport.
“Whatever it takes, to ensure that fans travelling up and down the country aren’t having games cancelled six or seven minutes in, is something we should all work towards.”
That abandonment meant that, like Spurs, it will have been over ten days since Chelsea were last in action in a 1-1 draw against Arsenal on January 15th. Both sides will have hoped to benefit from the extended rest, but that does not change the fact that the visitors are overwhelming favourites going into this one.
As well has never having beaten Chelsea in any competitive meetings between the two, Spurs lost the most recent encounter back in December, a resounding 3-0 defeat in front of 38,000 fans at Stamford Bridge.
On top of that, Chelsea have won the Continental Cup twice, once in 2020, and retained it the following year in 2021. They were also runners-up in the competition last year, losing the final to Manchester City 3-1.
Although Tottenham are yet to reach the final of the competition, they have thoroughly impressed in Group E, having comfortably dispatched Reading, Coventry and Southampton en route to the quarter-finals, and will be looking to obtain a reprieve from their wretched league run of 5 consecutive defeats with a much-needed – albeit highly unlikely – victory over their London rivals tomorrow.
Have your say on tomorrow’s cup clash on the Vital Spurs fan forum here.