Chelsea 4-0 Charlton, Women's FA Cup: Post-match reaction

Today at 12:07 PM

Cruising into the next round!

The Blues will only be back on the pitch next Sunday, taking on West Ham away in the Women's Super League. That and the prolonged winter break we just took might be the two main reasons behind manager Sonia Bompastor deciding to "deploy" Chelsea Women's strongest starting eleven against Women's Championship team Charlton Athletic in the FA Cup's fourth round at Kingsmeadow today.

Despite not being part of the country's elite, the Addicks did get a shot in the first few minutes of the match against Hannah Hampton's goal. Soon after that Chelsea began completely dominating the pitch in every inch of it, leaving little space for the opposition to breath while creating (and wasting) several goalscoring chances.

An opening goal in our favour felt quite close in several instances. It finally arrived when Mayra Ramírez headed it into the back of the next from a Lucy Bronze cross turned assist.

Charlton, who were set on making our life very hard in front of goal by putting several of their players in the box, were finally breached. Soon enough we'd find a second goal as they couldn't contain Mayra in the box and were forced to foul her instead, thus giving Guro Reiten a chance to convert a penalty kick — which she did!

Coming from the tunnels for the second half, Chelsea were quick to continue expanding their lead. Mayra assisted Aggie Beever-Jones for our third goal today only a couple of minutes after kick-off.

A comfortable three-goal lead had Chelsea not as intent as they once were to keep adding goals to the scoreline. This doesn't mean they would completely giving up on it however, as Niamh Charles showed.

Niamh's goal completely deflated Charlton, who were already too tired to try anything upfront. Chelsea could have scored a fifth goal and came quite close to it a couple of times. But we'll take a 4-0 victory, which is the exact same result we got against the Addicks five years ago in the cup.

Carefree!

• Lauren James is back in the fold!
• Mayra Ramírez gets the opener after several chances created by the team. Lauren was involved in almost all of those in the first half, including the goalscoring play.
• Really appreciate Lucy Bronze taking the ball before the penalty so she can soak in all the smack talk from Charlton, before letting Guro Reiten take it.
• Wieke Kaptein being stretched off in the final minutes of the match. Hope it's just a minor scare and nothing else!
• Next up: West Ham away in the Women's Super League.
• KTBFFH!