UK Edition
Manchester City Women beat depleted Arsenal on penalties to win Continental League Cup final
Arsenal 0 Manchester City 0 (City win 4-2 on penalties)
Via Manchester City’s Janine Beckie, there was at least a first in this final to stunt the general sense of deja vu. The last six finals in this competition have yielded just nine goals and four of them have been decided by one: a first half that was as taut as they come, a staring contest in which both teams dared the other to blink first, aptly captured the zeitgeist until the Women’s League Cup final went to penalties for the first time.
Georgia Stanway and Kim Little both converted with ease before Lauren Hemp and Leah Williamson saw their attempts saved. Karen Bardsley swooped to keep out Danielle van De Donk’s effort after Claire Emslie had scored hers, and despite Dominique Bloodworth matching Steph Houghton’s low drive Beckie finished assuredly.
City had a late flurry of chances after surviving their nerviest moment early doors - Houghton’s sliding clearance from van de Donk’s cross cannoning onto the post - but despite their second-half dominance this game was always destined to inch towards extra-time. Mostly, this was a case of wondering just how things could have been had Arsenal’s focal point Vivianne Miedema - the official explanation is fatigue from Wednesday’s game against Yeovil - been able to start. Arsenal, such is their injury crisis, named just five substitutes.
“We had to play a certain way today - I call it very un-Arsenal - and when you play the way you do, you will always create very few chances,” said Arsenal boss Joe Montemurro. “That’s not my style. We had these resources and we had to come up with a gameplan for that scenario. Did we want to keep the ball a little bit more? Absolutely. These are finals and big moments count.”
This was 22 players - all of whom were some variation of ‘fine’ - sizing each other up, poised like cowboys on the brink of a duel, neither daring to give much away. An anticlimactic first thirty minutes had the feel of those slightly perfunctory birthday parties depicted in American sitcoms: an anaemic clown in the corner, a reluctant game of Pictionary, a slew of deflated balloons. There were few errors but in the ensuing sterilised game of pass the parcel there was precious little to write home about.
That it took 40 minutes for City to draw a save from Arsenal’s keeper Sari Van Veenendaal sums up a tepid first half in which the pair nulfied each other’s game plans to perfection. City inched their way towards dominance in the final 15 minutes of a half that sputtered into life only at its death, but their opponents defended stubbornly. At one point all bar one of City’s outfield players were camped in the Arsenal half but were unable to find a way through the maze of red shirts. van De Donk, repeatedly cutting in from the right, was Arsenal’s most dangerous outlet, but met a formidable adversary in Houghton.
The best chance of the half fell to Gemma Bonner: Houghton’s plunging header from Caroline Weir’s corner was saved by Van Veenendaal but the scrambling Bonner failed to turn home the rebound. There were a few more late jabs but they were the death rattle of a half that had barely lived than evidence of the concerted purpose that saw City stun these opponents 2-0 before Christmas.
Arsenal have learned, since that afternoon when they were outclassed on City’s turf, that to stop Nikita Parris is to stop Manchester City: in the opening stages she was marshalled ably by Louise Quinn and Leah Williamson. That Stanway was sucked so deep in an effort to make anything happen meant City were unable to unleash Parris into the sprint finishes from which she always proves so lethal.
After the break City were comfortably in the ascendancy. Parris crashed a header onto the bar on 60 minutes before thundering into a header that van Veenendaal palmed away at the eleventh hour. Parris hit the bar again from close-range but so taut were proceedings that even Miedema’s introduction couldn’t turn the tides of a game that was destined for extra time - until the shootout provided a theatrical finale.
“If the players practiced penalties [beforehand], I wasn’t there,” said the City manager Nick Cushing. “We didn’t have a structured penalties session but I know Bardsley practiced them yesterday as I was walking in. But they [Bardsley and her goalkeeping coach] nailed it today because they had all the information on the players - we can’t be certain, but they predicted them right.”
Match details
Arsenal (4-5-1): Van Veenendaal; Arnth (Miedema, 69), Williamson, Quinn, Veje (Hazard, 71); McCabe, Bloodworth, Little, Van de Donk, Evans; Mead.
Booked: Bloodworth.
Subs not used: Peyraud-Magnin, Kuyken, Albuquerque.
Manchester City (4-4-2): Bardlsey; Bonner, Houghton, Beattie, Stokes; Wullaert (Beckie ,63), Walsh, Scott, Weir (Emslie, 118); Parris (Hemp, 104), Stanway.
Booked: Bardlsey, Parris.
Subs not used: Roebuck, Bremer, Campbell, McManus.
Referee: Lucy Oliver (Durham).