Chelsea striker Fran Kirby has warned there will be no let up in performance when they take on London Bees in Sunday’s FA WSL Continental Tyres Cup tie.
The FA Cup holders and WSL 1 leaders have secured three wins out of four in the Continental Tyres Cup so far, their latest triumph a 6-0 win over Millwall Lionesses in which Kirby hit a hat-trick.
Victory over WSL 2 side London Bees at Staines Town will guarantee Chelsea’s passage to the quarter-final and, having beaten them 13-0 last term, Emma Hayes’ team will be confident of progress.
But Kirby wants her team to ensure they are as professional as ever in their approach.
Chelsea v London Bees
The Continental Tyres Cup
Group One
2pm, Sunday 30 August
Staines Town FC
“We’ve got to go out there and play like we can do,” said the former Reading striker.
“We have to keep the momentum going that we have had since the Arsenal game. We can’t stop that now and we have to go out all guns blazing again and take it to London Bees.
“They haven’t had the best of results recently but they’ll put up a fight and not give up, so we can’t go there expecting to beat them 8-0 or 9-0. We’ll play our way and hope to get the result.
“When you play teams in the league below you, you can always guarantee that they’re going to sit in deep and make it difficult, so you have to try and break them down.
“We did it when I was at Reading and you’ve got to give big teams and big players the respect they deserve.”
For London Bees, 2015 has been a year of progress. They already have more WSL 2 points this term than they acquired throughout the whole of last season.
And though that progress was stifled with an 8-0 defeat to Reading last weekend, defender Billie Brooks remains upbeat and is looking forward to the challenge of trying to tame Chelsea.
“It’s an honour really to be playing against players like Chelsea’s,” she said. “We know how difficult it will be, but we want to test them if we can and show what we can do.
“We will go into it very open minded after what happened on Saturday and we’re looking forward to the challenge.
“This competition has been enjoyable, I just wish we could have got a few more good results.
“But places like Chelsea, it’s where we want to be playing regularly in the future, so we will learn all the lessons we can from this game.”
