Sonia Bompastor: Chelsea boss hails comeback win over Everton

Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor has hailed her team’s response to falling behind as they came back to beat Everton 2-1 in the Women’s Super League on Sunday.

The clash at Kingsmeadow echoed the FA Cup meeting between the two teams a week prior in which the Toffees initially took the lead in the first half. On that occasion, Chelsea fought back to win 4-1 and booked their place in the quarter-finals of the competition.

Sunday’s match at Kingsmeadow was a much tighter contest, with Everton once again breaking the deadlock, this time early in the second half. A little over 10 minutes later, Mayra Ramirez put the hosts back on level terms, but Chelsea appeared to be heading for a draw.

That was until Lauren James fired home a winner deep into stoppage time. The Chelsea star was picked out by Sandy Baltimore and calmly found the bottom corner with a strike from outside the box to keep the London club's seven-point lead at the top of the WSL standings firmly in tact.

Speaking to Chelseafc.com after the game, Bompastor expressed her delight at the way her team fought back to clinch a crucial victory in the WSL. “I’m really pleased with the reaction of my players because, even last week, we stayed confident,” she said.

“Today was a little bit different but, again, we trust we are able to score any time in the game. At the end of the game, we had the talent of LJ [Lauren James] and it’s really good when you have these types of players.”

It was a significant moment for James, who has endured injury struggles this season. The 23-year-old missed the majority of the first half of the campaign with a calf problem, but returned to action at the end of January.

Sunday’s goal was James’s first since returning to fitness and her second of the campaign overall. Bompastor praised the forward’s determination to keep pushing right until the end, even though she was feeling fatigued.

“Being able to score in that moment, she said she was tired by this time in the second half,” the manager concluded. “It’s just her talent and she believed it was possible for her to shoot and she had a great shot. 

“If you never try, you never get something. I’m really pleased with that and my players always try, even when something doesn’t work, they try again.

“That’s something really good for us and, until the end, we were believing it was possible.”

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