Chelsea hammer dismal Liverpool 9-1 and storm into Women’s League Cup semis | OneFootball

Humiliated, humbled and, frankly, embarrassed, it was probably a relief for Liverpool when the clock reached 90:00 and the referee Grace Lowe immediately blew the final whistle without adding any stoppage time, bringing a sympathetically early end to a chastening afternoon for the Reds, dismantled by a Chelsea side who barely needed to break sweat.

It is not supposed to be this easy in a quarter-final between top-flight sides. The scoreboard read 9-1. “At least it wasn’t 10,” one home fan said while trudging back to the car. The truth is, it could have been worse, had Chelsea not rather bizarrely had two set-piece goals ruled out for soft-looking fouls in the box that no Liverpool player seemed to appeal for.

For Chelsea, it was a very happy end to a calendar year in which they won a domestic treble, as they cruised to victory with a hat-trick from Johanna Rytting Kaneryd and two goals from an in-form Sam Kerr, setting up a semi-final at Manchester City in January. For the home side, this was a new low in a dismal first half of their campaign.

Gareth Taylor, the Liverpool manager, said his team “were punished today for all the errors we made”, adding: “We were naive in some of our play and gifted them goals. You can’t do that against a team like Chelsea.

“The levels were off, and then when you don’t perform to an acceptable level of sprinting, competing, reacting, then obviously you’re going to make it really difficult.”

It took just 13 minutes for Chelsea to take the lead. Niamh Charles’s low ball into the box found Kerr, who darted in front of her marker with ease and found the near, bottom corner.

If Taylor was frustrated at a lack of pressure on the ball for the first goal, Chelsea’s second, just four minutes later, will have infuriated him further. His team gave away possession inside their own defensive third and allowed Kerr to finish neatly.

It was three when Wieke Kaptein turned smoothly on the edge of the box and lashed in a good finish. Aggie Beever-Jones’s effort made it 4-0. The only sour note for Chelsea came when the England striker had to be withdrawn with a potential injury before half-time. Sonia Bompastor explained it was an ankle problem, saying: “Hopefully it won’t be too bad, but it doesn’t look great at the moment.”

In the second half, Rytting Kaneryd began to steal the show, curling in a beauty from distance. Jenna Clark did claw one back for Liverpool from close range but any respite was brief, with Rytting Kaneryd’s deflected effort making it 6-1 just moments later. Sjoeke Nüsken and Millie Bright added further goals for the visitors either side of Rytting Kaneryd completing her treble.

Liverpool could scarcely win the ball off the holders and they were slow to react to second balls, most notably as Nüsken’s left-footed shot came back off the crossbar and Rytting Kaneryd was the first to reach the rebound for her hat-trick. In the stands, the atmosphere among the home supporters was increasingly dejected. Surprisingly, the majority of the 2,467 crowd stayed until the end. Taylor’s expression was downbeat, to say the least. His players’ body language even worse.

Bottom of the league and now emphatically out of the League Cup, pressure will be higher than ever on the former Manchester City coach, who was appointed in August and has not yet overseen a league win.

His injury-depleted squad meant he could name only five substitutes compared with Chelsea’s nine, and he said recruiting players in January would be “really important”.

Taylor said: “I always like to think logically and it’s really tough to be super, super critical because we’re working tremendously hard here to improve this thing. But there are a lot of things we need in order to be able to do that.”

He felt this had been “a game too far” for his side. Asked what his message had been to his players after the game, Taylor, who was calm and did not seem angry with his team, said: “Just that we’re trying to get help.”

Header image: [Photograph: Jess Hornby/WSL/WSL Football/Getty Images]