And that’ll be it for this one. Cheers for reading, and ta ra.
Katie Chapman leads the Chelsea players up the steps, and lifts the FA Cup for the ninth - ninth! - time, with the help of Claire Rafferty.
So just the one goal, a pretty scrappy one from Ji, but Chelsea’s overall play was far superior with the goalscorer and Eni Aluko providing plenty of threat. Notts never really got going, and barely created anything.
That’s Chelsea’s first major trophy, after losing out on the WSL title in the last minutes of last season. Aluko praises manager Emma Hayes in her post-match interview, who herself says she knew Chelsea were going to win from the opening minute.
Full-time: Chelsea 1-0 Notts County - CHELSEA WIN THE WOMEN'S FA CUP
And they deserve it, too...
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90 mins + 2: A foul throw! Sophie Walton doesn’t carry out the most basic task in football correctly, and is called for it in the closing minutes. Now THAT is careless.
90 mins + 1: Three minutes of added time though, and Notts could still cause some problems. However Davidson makes her way into the corner with the help of a lovely Cruyff turn that leaves a few defenders grasping.
90 mins: Chelsea employ the old ‘make a late sub by taking off the furthest player from the bench’ to wind down a bit of time, with Ji jogging across the pitch to be replaced by Laura Coombs.
89 mins: Borges does brilliantly to dribble the ball right into the corner, then wins a corner-kick by smacking the thing off the shins of a defender. They commit a grand total of one player to the box for said kick.
87 mins: Chelsea bunkering in for the last few minutes now. Could be an error to invite the late pressure...
86 mins: By-the-by, Manchester City are getting shanked 4-0 in a pre-season friendly against Stuttgart, and it’s not even half-time yet. Oy vey.
85 mins: Chance for O’Sullivan shortly after coming on. Notts going for the ‘mixer’ approach now, lifting the ball into the area where the sub is relatively unmarked, but mistimes her jump to the point that she can’t get anything on the header.
83 mins: Ji hoys a ball into the middle looking for Chapman, who can’t get a proper head on it but the ball does drop to Spence, who steadies herself on the edge of the box but drags the right-footed shot well wide.
82 mins: Another Notts sub, with Fiona O’Sullivan on for Crichton. Meanwhile - freestyle!
i'm in fucking tears https://t.co/wotPfI8DE6
— Can I Live (@_karan_) August 1, 2015
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80 mins: Chelsea’s first change - Ana Marques Borges is introduced, with Eni Aluko withdrawn. Can only assume there’s an injury involved there, or that Aluko has knackered herself out trying to play about five different positions.
78 mins: Bit of a Hail Mary ball into the middle for Notts, hoying the thing towards the back post where the sub Whelan is, but she can’t quite wrap her foot around the thing and the effort goes wide.
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76 mins: Sub for Chelsea - Danielle Buet is off, and Aileen Whelan comes on.
74 mins: 30,710 inside Wembley for this one, which as you’d imagine is a record for a Women’s FA Cup final.
73 mins: From that corner flicks from Fahey and Aluko find Flaherty on the edge of the six-yard box, but she lefts it over the bar with the outside of her right foot.
72 mins: Chelsea counter at some pace, with Aluko again down the right, but this time she doesn’t do quite as well, jinking right when the pass left to Ji looked on, and she can’t get either a cross or shot into a dangerous area. She does manage to win a corner, though.
70 mins: Ji tries an effort that we’ll file under ‘ambitious’ from about 35 yards out. It’s straight at Telford, but a bit of late dip and a bounce in front of the County keeper at least makes it a little difficult, but she gathers safely in the end.
66 mins: More Aluko (other players are on the pitch, promise), as she skims over a cross from the right, but it bounces away and Chelsea can’t capitalise on the chance.
64 mins: There’s Aluko again, given as much time as she likes on the edge of the box before firing in a low right-footed shot across goal, but Telford does well to not only make the save, but push it away from the lurking Chelsea forwards hoping for a follow-up.
63 mins: And up the other end Aluko gets away once more, dashing down the right having been played in by Spence, but she dithers slightly and the cut-back, aiming in theory for Ji, is pretty shoddy and the attack breaks down.
61 mins: Close for Notts! Twice! A corner comes over from the right, it drops out to the Canadian on the edge of the box and she fires in a shot, it deflects off Flaherty and goes just - just - wide. From the next corner Crichton gets up at the near post and heads towards goal, but Davidson is waiting on the line to clear. Closest they’ve come all game, and all in the same minute.
59 mins: Salty challenge by Clarke on Chapman, initially trying a little shove in the back but then going full out with a hack to the side of the shins. No censure beyond a metaphorical wagged finger from the ref, mind.
58 mins: The boss is watching. Can everyone send in a few emails saying how brilliant I am, please?
Women's FA Cup final: Chelsea v Notts County – live! http://t.co/Ot66ww3pvz
— Katharine Viner (@KathViner) August 1, 2015
56 mins: And here is that change - Susi is on, with Rachel Williams coming off. A full-back for a forward seems like a slightly odd move when you’re 1-0 down, but Susi might play on the wing with Ellen White pushed up top.
55 mins: Almost a chance for Chelsea, as Blundell slips a pass through to Spence, but Turner does well to usher the ball away from that particular brand of trouble.
54 mins: Looks like an early change for Notts in this second-half, with Dunia Susi having removed the trackie and receiving her final instructions.
51 mins: Looks like Ji is playing a little deeper in this half, with Spence pushed further up field. Aluko again pops up in the left-back region, seemingly determined to play all the positions.
48 mins: Davidson makes tracks down the Chelsea right before quite literally slipping over. One of those occasions when the football could’ve been nicely enhanced with a swanee whistle.
46 mins: Notts quite literally get the ball rolling. And Chelsea are on the attack straight away, Blundell finding herself in oodles of space on the right and she puts over a cross, but Aluko can’t quite get her feet organised enough to turn the thing home, completely missing the ball around eight yards from goal.
And the players are back out for the second half. Looks like no changes for either side.
A fairly even one until around the half hour mark, but then Chelsea - or more specifically Eni Aluko - seemed to get their arses in gear and caused some serious bother, largely from the left, from where she created the only goal for Ji.
Half-time: Chelsea 1-0 Notts County
Peeeeeeeeeeep, peeeeeeeeeeep, peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
45 mins: One minute of added time.
44 mins: Smashing move from Chelsea, started by Aluko in the left-back position for some reason (although her performance is starting to resemble Superman playing table tennis against himself), with some slick passing opening up some space on the right, the cross comes over and Drew Spence attempts what we’ll call an ‘ambitious’ overhead kick, but she skews it a fair way wide.
42 mins: First yellow card of the final goes to Katie Chapman, who goes into the book for what we’ll call a ‘pragmatic’ pull back on Turner, who looked like she was away down the right.
6 - Six of the last seven #WomensFACupFinal matches have been won by the side scoring the first goal of the game. Advantage.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) August 1, 2015
40 mins: That five minute burst of creativity from Aluko was hugely impressive, and this Notts defence don’t look terribly certain about how to deal with not just her pace, but her close control.
37 mins: Aluko was at the heart of things again, belting in from the left, her quick feet again making a chance as she pokes it to Ji around ten yards out. She can’t get the shot away immediately, but after a brief scramble the ball pops out and eludes Telford, giving Ji the easiest task of poking it over an unguarded line.
Updated
GOAL! Chelsea 1-0 Notts County (Ji 37)
Well that had been coming.
36 mins: What a miss! Aluko’s on the ball again, this time on the left, cutting in and crossing to the far post where Davidson is unmarked, but somehow puts it across goal and wide. Poor stuff, that.
35 mins: There’s one though, as Aluko - comfortably the liveliest player on the pitch so far - slices her way through the Notts defence, with her feet in a Road Runner style blur, but while she gets some oomph behind the shot it’s straight at Telford, who saves fairly easily.
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34 mins: Bit of a scrappy spell. Chelsea have certainly been the more threatening team, but they haven’t managed to carve out a huge amount by way of clear chances.
30 mins: Closest we’ve come to a goal so far. Davidson drills a ball that seems to take the Notts defence by surprise and Aluko’s pace again allows her to outstrip the defenders. Telford comes out but is too slow, and Aluko clips the ball around the keeper, but the touch is just a smidge too strong and leaves her with an angle just too tight, putting the ball into the side-netting.
29 mins: Crichton (pronounced Kryten) again clips the ball over the top looking for White, but again it’s a little too strong for the striker’s run.
26 mins: Half chance for Chelsea as Davidson gets down the right and zips in a cross, but Aluko can’t quite get on the end of it. It’s been a ‘nearly but not quite’ game so far.
23 mins: Aluko causes seven shades of havoc with her pace down the left, gliding past Crichton with startling ease, but there’s nobody there to latch onto the cut-back.
22 mins: Flaherty and Williams go up for a header, but the former attempts to climb aboard the latter’s shoulders in order to get it. Pretty sure that’s not allowed, and the referee agrees.
21 mins: Another free-kick for Chelsea, this time from deep on the left and Ji swings it over to the back stick. Fahey is there and gets a left boot on it, but the ball sails over the bar. No shots on target just yet.
19 mins: Jess Clarke barrels down the left, but then slightly loses control of the thing and has to go in hard on Niamh Fahey, and she’s penalised. The ball goes straight up the other end and Ji tries to flick it over her own and Bassett’s heads on the edge of the area, but the England defender ain’t having none of that, and sticks her head in the way.
17 mins: Wonderful drop of the shoulder from Ji as she wriggles away from her marker out on the right, but there’s little Chelsea presence in the area and Notts clear with relative ease.
15 mins: Another shout for a handball as Ji fires in a cross, Eni Aluko flicks it on and it again strikes Turner on the forearm, but nothing doing again from the ref, and again rightly so.
14 mins: Chelsea haven’t really managed to test Telford’s iffy shoulder yet. You’d think that they’d at least stick one or two in the mixer early doors to be fair.
13 mins: Penalty shout for Chelsea as a low, fired cross hits Alex Greenwood’s hand in the area, but she was looking the other way so it would have been a particularly harsh decision.
12 mins: The effing England effing band are here playing the effing Great effing Escape effing theme. Can there be no escape from these effing effs?
9 mins: PFA Player of the Year Ji has her first chance to make an impression on the game, jinking through the middle but Amy Turner puts a perfectly-timed challenge in to stop her. Ji flings herself to the ground in a flamboyant fashion, but no dice from the ref there as she protests.
8 mins: Williams and Chapman come together in midfield, and neither seem keen to admit any sort of wrong. Good. More of this please.
5 mins: Cagey opening so far. Claire Rafferty, a no-nonsense full-back who controversially wears No.11, has put in a strong tackle or two, but nothing to get especially excited about.
2 mins: First sort-of-chance of the game, as Notts win a free-kick out on the right. Alex Greenwood whips it over but there’s a bit too much on it and the ball sails out of play at the back stick.
1 mins: And we’re away. I am obliged to note that the pitch looks resplendent. It does though, in fairness.
The first bit of good news is Jonathan Pearce isn’t commentating on this one, as he did during the World Cup. His surrealist skit about the price of wet wipes in Canada during the semi-final was a particular high point. Or low point. A point, anyway.
The players have done their warm-ups and all at Wembley are now being treated to the traditional ear-splitting PA system. They really do not scrimp on the decibels down there, which depending on how you look at it is either massively unnecessary or hugely irritating. Or both.
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Jacob Steinberg met Chelsea’s Ji So-yun, and this is what she said:
Ji So-yun puts her hands over her ears, shakes her head in mock horror and lets out a bashful laugh. “No!” she exclaims. “No!” We have lurched into awkward territory: just what is it like to be known as the Korean Messi?
Chelsea Ladies’ brilliant South Korean midfielder would prefer to avoid the topic altogether, not because she is an avid Cristiano Ronaldo fan, with posters of the Real Madrid star on her wall and a Twitter account set up in his honour, but because of the pressure that accompanies such a lavish compliment. Although the comparison to Messi is an obvious source of pride for Ji, she is determined to keep her talented feet on the ground. “It’s a huge honour,” she says. “But I feel a bit embarrassed and there is slightly more pressure on me to perform now because I need to live up to the name.”
Here’s Alex Scott, of Arsenal and England, to break down the way the two teams will approach this one:
How they will play
Chelsea will look for goals from the off. Emma loves the attacking game and is not shy about saying it, so the plan will be to get the ball as quickly as possible to players such as Gemma Davison, Eni Aluko and Ji So-yun. They have great firepower but showed with their recent signing of Fran Kirby from Reading that they are still building on their attacking threat.
Worth noting that while Carly Telford is in nets for Notts today, they would probably rather she wasn’t. She dislocated her shoulder at the World Cup and isn’t back to full fitness, but since they don’t have another eligible keeper, and the FA wouldn’t allow them to register a replacement/back-up, she has to play.
Not that she sounds too fussed about it all, mind. She told the Nottingham Post this week: “After four days of doing the injury, I was back out on the pitch, catching, doing stuff with the England medical team and they were quite happy for me to start my rehab. That’s how it’s been for the last three and a half weeks.
“I am probably stronger now then I was post Canada due to the amount of work I’ve done. I am in a real good place and that’s why I could play last Sunday.”
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While we wait for kick-off, some pre-match reading for you. Here’s Nick Ames looking at the brief rise and rise of the artists formerly known as Lincoln Ladies, Notts County:
While the name is synonymous with longevity, Notts County’s presence at Wembley for Saturday’s women’s FA Cup final against Chelsea revives a discussion that has continued during these times of progress in women’s football. Notts County will celebrate their 153rd birthday this November, but the women’s arm of the club is only 18 months old and its change of incarnation – effectively moving from Lincoln to take up a place in the Women’s Super League last year – has raised questions about the collateral cost of advancement in the sport.
The facts that post-date their relocation, which saw Lincoln Ladies uprooted to Meadow Lane, are compelling. Notts County Ladies have been watched by higher crowds than anybody else in the Women’s Super League during the franchise’s first season and a half, their attendance record of 2,057 beaten only when Manchester City played Birmingham after the World Cup. Their squad contains five England players – including Laura Bassett – and they sit four points off the leaders, Sunderland, in an increasingly competitive top flight. More broadly, their integration with the men’s club, newly relegated to League Two, has set a standard for the sport in general.
Team news
Notts County
Telford; Bassett, Greenwood, Turner, Buet, White, Scott, Walton, Crichton, Clarke, Williams. Subs: Susi, O’Sullivan, Plumptre, A. Whelan, O’Neill.
Chelsea
Lindahl; Blundell, Flaherty, Fahey, Rafferty; Chapman (c), Bright, Spence; Davison, Ji So-Yun, Aluko. Subs: Hourihan, Borges, Coombs, Brett, Banusic.
Referee: Amy Fearn (Derbyshire)
Preamble
Weird thing, football. These days, there’s almost literally no end to it. If you were so inclined, had a robust enough internet connection and nothing else better to do, you could probably watch at least one game every day, all year round. Obviously the Guardian would recommend you don’t do this and maybe go outside or read a book, or read a book outside, or read a book about the outside, but it remains true that the option is there, and thus that modern football is utterly relentless. Thus, the traditional time structure of the game, the allocation of periods of the year to the sport, are basically irrelevant.
That said, the FA Cup final in August is a bit weird.
But here it is, and here it has been for a while after the shrewd decision to make the women’s season a summer affair upon the establishment of the WSL in 2011. And there can rarely have been a more high-profile Women’s FA Cup final in its 44-year history, not only because this is the first time the big event has been staged at Wembley, but also because of the level of interest in the women’s game after the summer’s World Cup, in which England of course came third.
A few of those England players will be on duty today, notably Eni Aluko, Katie Chapman, Claire Rafferty and the recently-purchased Fran Kirby, while Carly Telford, Ellen White and of course Laura Bassett, continuing the fine tradition of heroic tragedy for England players at major tournaments after her own-goal in the semi-final against Japan.
“It would be an iconic picture, but that is not my motivation,” Bassett told BBC Sport about the possibility of her lifting the cup following that calamity in Canada. “My motivation is to make Notts County Ladies as successful as it can be. I could not care who lifted the cup. I just want the Notts County name to be etched in that trophy.”
We think that’s what’s called a steely resolve. Indeed, finances won’t exactly be a motivation either, as the winner of this one will receive a paltry £8,600 for their efforts, meaning Notts will actually lose money on the whole business even if they lift the trophy.
Still, should be a good game nonetheless. Chelsea go into this one as the favourites, but only one place separates the teams in the league, so who knows what will happen. Let’s find out.
Kick-off: 3pm BST
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