Chelsea v Leicester: Women’s Super League – live! | Football

Out come the players! And for that matter the coaching teams, with Leicester’s including a grinning Emile Heskey.

The managers have a chat with Sky. First, Emma Hayes on her selection process:

Trust the squad. They’ve been amazing all the way through the season so far and when you have so many games in quick succession it’s not always the freshest in the legs, it’s freshest in the mind. We organise the team to perform in the first half, so this group have a job to do in the first half. We know we regularly make multiple subs who make an impact from the bench and I suspect that will be the same again today.

And then Leicester’s Jonathan Morgan:

Emma’s a fantastic tactician, she’ll make me think and hopefully I’ll make her think as well. The last thing I’ll say is: No fear, we are who we are, we have our own ability we need to insert into the game, but enjoy the opportunity because you never know when it will happen again.

Team news is filtering in, and here it is. Lots of changes for Chelsea:

Chelsea: Musovic, Nouwen, Bright, Ingle, England, Kirby, Eriksson, Fleming, Charles, Spence, Andersson. Subs: Berger, Carter, Leupolz, Ji, Reiten, Kerr, Cuthbert, Harder, Fox.
Leicester: Levell, Brougham, McManus, Plumptre, Purfield, O’Brien, Pike, Tierney, Cain, Flint, Sigsworth. Subs: Lambourne, Harris, De Graaf, Howard, Bailey-Gayle, Zajmi, Brown, Robinson.

Hello world!

A few years ago Leicester’s men’s team pulled off one of the great surprises in the history of football, winning the Premier League at 5,000-1 odds. Bookmakers rate the chance of their women’s side winning this single match at just 100-1, but really if they produce an upset at Kingsmeadow this afternoon it would be a jaw-dropping result of not-far-off comparable ridiculousness.

Chelsea, after all, are the two-time reigning champions, with a Kirby-Kerr-Harder frontline that is arguably the best in the game, who have lost two league matches since January 2019 and have won 11 of their last 13 league matches while conceding in only four. Leicester just got promoted, and have lost every one of their first four WSL matches by an aggregate score of 11-2. Plus, Chelsea used up an entire season’s worth of defensive calamity in their midweek 3-3 Champions League draw with Wolfsburg so the Foxes are unlikely to have any of that either.

But, it’s football, so who knows?