Joe Montemurro provided an honest assessment of our SSE Women’s FA Cup exit on Sunday, after slipping to a 3-0 defeat to Chelsea at Kingsmeadow.
Our manager was naturally disappointed after such a performance, but revealed that it could prove to be a ‘blessing in disguise’ with his squad now having just eight games to focus on.
We spoke to Montemurro after the final whistle - and this is what he said:
on the overall performance…
They were just better than us. They have the squad capacity, they were better in front of goal and deserved to win the game.
on successfully playing three at the back last time out - and why it failed today…
You design a squad and put a squad together that can do numerous things and unfortunately we just didn’t have the resources today to do those things. But all credit to the girls, because I think in the first half we had numerous opportunities and it could have been a couple of goals for the good either way, but it didn’t happen today.
on the manner of Chelsea’s goals…
You applaud a good goal when you cut teams open and it’s good football obviously, but when you score through errors and things like that it is frustrating.
on whether this could be a blessing in disguise…
We go for every game, we go for every tournament and we came here to progress to the next round. Obviously we weren’t good enough today, so now we need to refocus on what we can still compete for. We’ve got a massive final on Saturday and the league to go for, so it could be a blessing in disguise.
on the lack of service for Miedema…
We played three at the back and we were playing too deep, meaning we weren’t able to get close to her and link-up as we normally do. Credit to Chelsea, they closed those areas, were a little more direct and caught us out in transition.
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