Arsenal Women 0 Chelsea Women 2

Chelsea kept alive their chances of claiming a domestic double and inflicted a crushing blow on Arsenal’s season as they beat their rivals to set up a Women’s FA Cup final meeting with Manchester City at Wembley.

Holders Chelsea struck through Norway winger Guro Reiten and South Korea midfielder Ji So-yun in a defiant and clinical second-half performance to reach the final for the fifth time in eight seasons since the domestic women’s game’s showpiece fixture moved to Wembley.

And psychologically this win was significant, as they once again got the better of their rivals on the big stage, in a repeat of last season’s final.

Arsenal, who were also knocked out of the Women’s Champions League on 31 March in Wolfsburg, now may well face a third consecutive trophyless season, with the Women’s Super League title race still extremely close but mathematically out of their hands. They are a point behind Chelsea with four league games remaining and reliant on Emma Hayes’ team slipping up.

Both teams had dreams of a double before kick-off and this was a game Arsenal had home advantage for, with neutral venues not used for the Women’s FA Cup semi-finals, but at a sold-out Meadow Park, they were never really able to find their rhythm.

Vivianne Miedema went close in a relatively low-key, cagey first half, with Chelsea slowly growing into the game and eventually looking comfortable for their victory. Moments before falling behind, Arsenal spurned their best chance as Beth Mead turned superbly in the box but flashed a low strike wide.

And, as is so often typical, they were made to pay for that immediately as Reiten was afforded too much space at the other end and drove a cracking finish into the far corner from outside the box. Chelsea had the better opportunities thereon, with Arsenal goalkeeper Manuela Zinsberger showing great agility to touch a Beth England shot around the post.

But some messy Arsenal defending allowed Ji to smash in the second off the underside of the crossbar and secure Chelsea’s spot in the May 15 final, against a City team who also won away from home, overcoming West Ham United in the first semi-final on Saturday.

Analysis – Arsenal playing third fiddle increasingly often

Neither Chelsea nor Manchester City can touch Arsenal’s record of winning the Women’s FA Cup 14 times, having lifted the trophy three times each by comparison, but in the modern, professional era, they both continue to seemingly have the edge over the club who were for so long the dominant Queens of the domestic women’s game, and this was a reminder of that.

The cup will now go to Chelsea or Man City again for a sixth straight year, with those two having taken control since Arsenal’s last triumph in the competition in 2016, and although Arsenal are still a powerful force in the sport, and although they have greatly improved this season compared to last term, there will be hugely disappointed that once again they are going to be watching one of their rivals celebrate at Wembley in May.

And Sunday’s meeting was arguably a bigger, more important game for Arsenal’s season than Chelsea’s, given the league title is in Chelsea’s hands with four games to go, and Arsenal could win all of their remaining league games yet still miss out on the WSL. Whereas, in this semi-final, on home turf, their destiny was in their own hands, but they didn’t quite deliver.

“I’m very disappointed in the match today, but I’m also very motivated in doing everything here to finish off the season as strongly as possible, that’s what we need to do,” Eidevall said. “It’s been clear for us, when we’ve seen us against Wolfsburg [in the Champions League] and when you see us today against Chelsea, that when we are playing at our best we can play against any team, but what we need to develop is more consistency, doing our basic principles over and over and over again better. Then we can develop into being a really, really strong team.”

Jonas Eidevall’s team certainly started the better of the two, and had their moments, but the longer the game went on the more it became evident that Chelsea are currently a better team, even with their captain Magdalena Eriksson on the bench, and without their brilliant England forward Fran Kirby, who has been ruled out indefinitely by an undiagnosed fatigue problem. Arsenal, comparatively, were pretty much full-strength.

Hayes wasn’t happy with her team’s “horrific” start to the contest, in her words, but summed up how they won the game by saying: “My team knows how to execute in the biggest moments and we’ve shown that again today.

“Defensively we’ve been solid. That’s our foundation, that keeps us in strong positions. In the first 20 minutes, I thought we were horrific, we didn’t get our legs going, but once we executed the game-plan defensively I felt we stifled them and they struggled. The goal came at the right time at the beginning of the second half but I thought we completely dominated by the end.”

Match details

Arsenal (4-2-1-3): Zinsberger 7; McCabe 6, Williamson 6, Wubben-Moy 6, Catley 6; Little 6, Walti 5 (Maanum, 64); Miedema 7; Mead 6, Blackstenius 6 (Parris 6, 71), Foord 7 (Heath 6, 71)
Subs not used: Beattie, Nobbs, Maritz, Williams (gk), Iwabuchi, Wienroither
Yellow cards: Mead

Chelsea (3-5-2): Berger 6; Bright 7, Nouwen 7, Carter 7; Charles 6, Ji 8 (Fleming 6, 79), Ingle 8, Cuthbert 7, Reiten 8; Kerr 7 (Harder 6, 72), England 6
Subs not used: Musovic, Eriksson, Mjelde, Spence, Andersson, Abdullina
Yellow cards: Cuthbert

Referee: Rebecca Welch (Tyne & Wear)
Attendance: 3,458