Martin Ho praised every single player who showed ‘bravery’ and ‘composure’ to step up and take a penalty before Lize Kop produced a stunning save in the shoot-out to see us topple London City Lionesses and earn our spot in the quarter-final of the Adobe Women’s FA Cup.
The cup tie at Hayes Lane was packed with action from the very beginning when Matilda Vinberg fired us ahead in the contest after just seven minutes before two goals in two minutes – from Danielle van de Donk and Jana Fernandez – just before the hour mark completely turned the game into London City’s favour.
As we entered stoppage time and the minutes continued to tick away, still 2-1 down, our FA Cup journey looked like it was coming to an end but, in the sixth minute of injury-time, we were handed a lifeline as Ryan Atkin pointed to the spot after a handball from Teyah Goldie inside the box. Bethany England stepped up and made no mistake to take the tie into extra time.
The additional 30 minutes passed and it remained all square and penalties followed. Remarkably the first 17 penalties were all calmly converted, nine from us, before Lize Kop eventually denied Wassa Sangare and secure us a 9-8 win in the shootout.
“When it goes to penalties, I never watch them anyway, I think it's a lottery - it's probably the cruellest part of football,” Martin told us after the game.
“But, [it was] outstanding bravery and courage from the players to step up and take the penalties because, at big moments, it's a lot of pressure. Then Lize comes out with the save at the end, that wins us the game, a really good squad effort.
“I think the team today, from start to finish, players who started, players who finished the game, they pushed the game from start to finish and over the course of it, I think we deserved it with the bigger moments we had. They've had some moments at the same time, but I think the way we defended the box was very, very good in the big moments.
“When you have that walk from the halfway line up to the penalty spot and when you get there, you've got to make sure that you're composed and you're relaxed - that's easy for us to say because we're not the ones stepping up but they'll feel a lot of pressure.
“The composure they showed to take those penalties and how well they were executed is a credit to the players because they're the ones who have to step up and do it. Lize, as I said, makes a fantastic save to win us the game and put us into a quarter-final.”
Chelsea awaits in the quarter-final of the competition – after the draw was conducted prior to our clash with London City – and our Head Coach is ready to put things right from our last meeting with the Blues at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium earlier this month.
“We now have a quarter-final against Chelsea. We've had a good game against them recently where we didn't come out on top, so we want to make sure we put that right. I know the performance levels we can get to and we were nowhere near our best today, but we had lots of big moments with the ball.
“Then defensively, I thought we were brilliant, we had to ride our luck at times like they did too. But hopefully we just could have capitalised on a few more of those chances within the game. However, an FA Cup game under the lights that puts you through to a quarter-final and for the neutral, it was probably brilliant to see it go to penalties.”
Martin on the importance of some rest with the international break now coming up: “There's the opportunity for the players who are staying with us, who don't go away to have a break, staff to switch off and have some time to reset and players who go on international duty, go away safe and come back safe. We will then start to rebuild to go into the Everton game, which is our next home game, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. We want to make sure that we can perform at a high level and compete in that game.”