Hayes on FA Cup semi triumph: It's not about any one player, it's about the whole

By Football Reporter

Chelsea beat Arsenal 2-0 to face a date with destiny with Manchester City, at Wembley on May 15.

Head coach said: “I thought we started really slowly, we didn’t carry out the game plan. It took us a real long time to get going, but once we did I thought we made it difficult for Arsenal to settle on the ball in the areas that they wanted to.

“The second half was evenly-poised, the goal came at the right time and I actually thought we dominated the second half.”

Guro Reiten and Jo scored wonder goals.

Hayes would not single out either goal-scorer Guro Reiten or Ji for special mention.

She said: “I’ve been an advocate for the whole squad the whole year and I’ve been clear that ever since January I’ve seen an even level across my squad, regardless of who you are.

“It’s not about any one player, it’s about the whole, and the players who are coming into the team have as much right to be playing as those who have established themselves over years.

“That’s what we want, that’s what we create, and part of the reason we’re vying for more titles is because we’re evolving, not just with the same players, but we don’t have a mass exodus of players and I think that really helps.”

Arsenal head coach Jonas Eidevall said: “If we would have carried on playing being disciplined, being consistent, carrying out the game plan, even if we were losing 1-0 it wouldn’t have been enough today.

“I think I could have accepted the defeat in that manner and said it wasn’t our day, but if we want to be a winning team, we can’t be dependent on scoring the first goal.

“Of course, it’s an advantage doing it, but we still need to have the mentality of being consistent, doing the right things over and over again and we didn’t do that. It’s disappointing.

“If we’re going to beat a team like Chelsea, we need to be consistent. We need to carry on playing. I think we showed the first 40 minutes we have quality enough to play against Chelsea and to beat them, but we need to do that much, much better and that’s not the easiest thing to fix.

“My biggest disappointment is how we reacted after we conceded that first goal and how we played that last five minutes of the first half which I thought was really, really poor focus from our side. We need to learn and we need to nullify those mistakes.”