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It’s a proud day - Emma

Chelsea manager Emma Hayes lavished praise on her side after their convincing 3-0 victory over Arsenal in the Vitality Women’s FA Cup Final.

“If it had been three or four nil at half time, nobody would have been surprised. We should have had more goals and then it would have been even more convincing,” she told the Chelsea FC website.

“It was dominant, it was dogged when it needed to be and tactically we got it spot on. We dealt with the threat really well and kept a clean sheet.

“It’s a proud day as the manager of Chelsea. I represent a club of people, backroom staff, players, owner and board, who are united in the teams we want to build. We painted Wembley blue!

“We were like a machine.”

Sam Kerr meanwhile revealed that her stunning second goal had come on the advice of team mate Carly Telford. “At half time we hadn’t scored as many as we should. CT said she [Zinsberger] is off her line a lot. I hadn’t been finishing too well in the first half so I thought I would try and scoop her. It doesn’t come off too often but it did.

“Whenever as a striker you are not putting them in the back of the net when they are simple chances you get a little frustrated. But it’s about who can keep their head and we knew if we could get one more, we would probably bury them and we did. We got the second and went on to get the third and it was game over.

“‘We deserved it. We played really well and have been playing well in the past few weeks. We kind of went in as underdogs so had a point to prove so we are buzzing. Our defence was amazing, our midfield was electric. It was a real team effort.

“The crowd were amazing, especially behind the goal with all the Chelsea flags. Walking out and seeing all the blue was a real buzz.”

A disappointed Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall admitted afterwards to arsenal.com: “It was a poor performance from us, from the quality. It’s not the effort that’s failing, the players were trying very, very hard on the pitch, but we don’t have good enough quality in our passing game today or in our defensive play and that’s very disappointing in a game like this that we can’t perform better.

“The only thing we can do is learn from that and come back stronger.”    

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