Hampton drew unwanted attention following Earps’ comments and it was not ideal preparation for her going into Saturday’s early kick-off, straight off the back of the international break.<\/p>\n
But the 24-year-old, who has chosen not to respond to Earps’ words, did not look fazed when she ran out, smiling and getting into her normal pre-match routine.<\/p>\n
She was rarely tested despite London City creating numerous chances, the best falling to Izzy Goodwin in the first half.<\/p>\n
Instead, it was a battle that was largely played on the wings. Bronze started on the right side of defence, allowing Carpenter to push forward ahead of her.<\/p>\n
Baltimore, on the left-hand side, was her usual tricky self and it was her neat footwork which opened up space for her to cross and pick out Carpenter for Chelsea’s opener.<\/p>\n
London City quickly responded, reforming their organised structure and finding ways to threaten Chelsea.<\/p>\n
Goodwin had several chances to bag an equaliser, coming close late in the second half before Kerr’s cheeky lob wrapped up victory.<\/p>\n
London City have grown with each game in the WSL and are now a competitive outfit who could prove to be real disrupters in the second half of the campaign.<\/p>\n
“We had the chances and against Chelsea you cannot have 20. We had five or six strong chances in that game,” said manager Jocelyn Precheur.<\/p>\n
“If you want to get points against the champions then you have to be efficient. I regret at half-time coming in 1-0 down as I think we had chances.<\/p>\n
“But there were a lot of positive things. What I like is we can start to see a team, which was my biggest challenge at the start of the season. On that point, I am satisfied.”<\/p>\n
London City were boosted by the quick recoveries of Freya Godfrey and Goodwin from minor injuries this week, but they could not quite match Chelsea’s depth on the bench.<\/p>\n
London City owner Michele Kang, in the stands alongside former USA forward Megan Rapinoe and basketball star Sue Bird, will have been given plenty of encouragement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hampton drew unwanted attention following Earps’ comments and it was not ideal preparation for her going into Saturday’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-237960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}