Barker: Chelsea Punished Our Mistakes
- Chelsea were at their clinical best during a 9-0 defeat of LCFC Women on Sunday
- Guro Reiten, Sam Kerr and Beth England all netted twice at King Power Stadium
- Foxes captain Sophie Barker gave an honest assessment of the loss to LCFC TV
- The performance was simply not good enough against a quality side, she said
The Foxes were up against it from the moment Guro Reiten opened the scoring within two minutes of kick-off at King Power Stadium on Sunday afternoon, quickly falling further behind in the opening quarter of an hour.
The lead had stretched to six goals by half-time as City were outclassed by an opponent determined to reclaim their place at the top of the league and Barker admitted they had no answer for the level of quality on display from Emma Hayes’ title-chasing team.
“We conceded two early on and we conceded in quick succession as well,” City’s skipper reflected to LCFC TV in her post-match interview. “I think conceding against Chelsea, you can’t do that two minutes in, and then we just didn’t bounce back from that.
“It took us 10 to 15 minutes to even find our feet and by that time it was 4-0. A team like Chelsea, they are going to punish you. The quality of the players and the quality of the movement was too good today and we just dwelled on it and looked sorry for ourselves.
“I think they had four shots and four on target in the first 15 minutes. Unfortunately for us, they all went in, but we were allowing the shots on target so we need to look at ourselves there and we have to think about how we cannot concede so early on and how we can stop them from being so dominant in our area of the pitch.
“I think we managed to middle half a little bit better, but still, 9-0, you can’t do that in a game like this against a team like Chelsea. We just didn’t turn up in the first 15 minutes. We need to weather the storm a little bit earlier on and we didn’t do that. We can’t allow that to happen again.”
Conceding Early Goals Our Downfall, Says Barker
Captain Sophie Barker assesses LCFC Women's reverse at home to Chelsea.
The midfielder, who came off the bench to replace the injured Ashleigh Plumptre during the first half and make her 10th WSL appearance of the campaign, believes Leicester must now take their medicine and focus on the next task in hand - tackling Arsenal back at King Power Stadium this Sunday (12:30pm kick-off).
“We learn from what we’ve done today,” the 31-year-old added. “It’s a big learning curve, a harsh one, but it’s one we needed. We’ll come back stronger next week. We’ll analyse the game really well, the gaffer’s attention to detail is brilliant.
“We need to go back and watch the game and she’ll let us know what went wrong. She’ll allow us to look forward and look at what we did wrong and hopefully we’ll put it right next week.
“We’ve got just as tough a game against Arsenal and we now need to reflect on what we’ve done today. We’ll pick ourselves up and bounce back.”