Joe Sheehan, the Ipswich manager, called for more teams to be promoted from the third tier to the Women’s Championship after his team’s gutsy performance in a 1-0 FA Cup quarter-final defeat to the Women’s Super League side West Ham.
“I think there should be loads [of teams being promoted],” said Sheehan. “There are so many clubs like ours that are doing so much, that are investing so much, that are committing so much. I want us all to achieve, I want us, Southampton, Wolves, [Nottingham] Forest, teams that are really trying to do things to a really high level, all to be rewarded.”
Sheehan’s frustrations stem from the fact that the winners of the Women’s National League South are not guaranteed promotion, but must compete in a play-off against the National League North winners for the sole promotion spot available. “I understand it’s a competition and results on the pitch should reward it,” he said.
“But we play 26 league games and could win 24 and not go up. I just don’t get it. But four go down.
“I understand that they are trying to rejig things a bit, but there’s too much good going on in tier three, and areas of tier four.” Ipswich are top of the league, four points clear of Oxford United and 13 clear of Southampton, who have five games in hand.
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Chelsea and Manchester City powered into the Women’s FA Cup semi-finals with comfortable victories against Birmingham and Everton respectively on Sunday. They join West Ham, following their win at Ipswich, and Arsenal, who saw off Coventry United on Friday, in the draw on Monday.
Chelsea produced a superb second-half display to thrash Birmingham 5-0 at Kingsmeadow. The first half was tight but last season’s double winners did not look back after Magdalena Eriksson opened the scoring on the stroke of half-time. Drew Spence doubled the lead before Beth England added a brace and Niamh Charles also got on the scoresheet. Jonna Andersson headed against the bar late on in a dominant showing.
City cruised through with Lauren Hemp twice on target in a 4-0 rout of Everton at the City Football Academy. Hemp scored either side of half-time, first smashing in from close range and then flicking in at the near post from a corner, after Lucy Bronze had earlier hit the post. Caroline Weir added a third with a brilliant long-range strike before Ellen White wrapped up the scoring in stoppage time. PA Media
In front of a sold-out crowd of more than 2,000, the Tractor Girls impressed against a team that play two tiers above them and have their best ever WSL points tally. “Physically I think we’re closer than I thought we would be, which is great,” said Sheehan. “Even for us to still match them and work as hard as we did with eight, nine, 10 minutes to go was still good. We’ve got players that are still 17, 18, 19 and they’re always going to take more time to get to the level.”
Lisa Evans broke the deadlock when Mel Filis trickled a pass in behind and the on-loan Arsenal player lifted it neatly over the Ipswich goalkeeper Sarah Quantrill in the first half. Before that, Quantrill had made a smart save on to a post from Lucy Parker’s header and Sheehan praised his goalkeeper and the resilient back line that kept West Ham quiet.
“Sarah’s brilliant. She always comes up and delivers in big moments,” said Sheehan. “That was a really good save. But I didn’t think they peppered her, we defended really well, we defended the spaces that we thought they would exploit really well.”
Olli Harder, the West Ham manager, was full of praise for the opposition, but never felt like his side lost control. “I thought we could have done more with some of the opportunities that we did create, but the bottom line is we were in control of 95% of the game in regards to making sure that they weren’t a threat and we managed to score,” he said.
For Ipswich, there are six games left to be in with a chance of promotion, while West Ham go into Monday night’s draw for the semi-finals with Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City. Harder is hoping for a home draw after three away games in a row in the Cup and is an advocate for a neutral ground for the semi-finals.
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“The men’s FA Cup, in the semi-final, they play at Wembley. I don’t see why we shouldn’t be doing that,” he said. “We talk a lot about things being equal and all the rest of it, I’m not sure why we need to be playing a home semi-final or an away semi-final, a neutral ground is fine. Maybe it doesn’t need to be Wembley, obviously there’s less spectators, I understand that, but surely there are some good neutral venues that we can pick that would be conducive to both teams.”