Slegers described an “unbelievable performance” in the second leg because of the fightback Arsenal knew Chelsea would give.<\/p>\n
Goalkeeper Daphne van Domselaar returned to the starting XI and put in a stunning performance, denying Sam Kerr on several occasions in the second half.<\/p>\n
England defender Lotte Wubben-Moy was a rock at the back in the absence of Leah Williamson and Arsenal were not shaken when fellow centre-half Steph Catley went off with a calf injury at the end of the first half.<\/p>\n
In-form striker Alessia Russo was full of tricks and flicks. The England international usually keeps touches on the ball to a minimum but she did what it took to escape tricky situations when pressure was building. <\/p>\n
Slegers said her team were prepared to “suffer” in order to get what they wanted and it paid off in the end.<\/p>\n
“It’s suffering for something you love. I think that’s what the team did really well. They were prepared for a difficult scenario and for momentum shifts,” she added.<\/p>\n
“In the first 15 minutes, potentially at the end of the game when things changed again, they just stayed in the ‘controlled middle’, as we call it. <\/p>\n
“They stayed in the game and were constantly in control of whatever scenario or momentum swing. They did their job. Mentally we were in control.<\/p>\n
“Of course, we wanted to stop them getting chances and in an ideal world there are no shots but it was two really good teams going against each other.”<\/p>\n
Former England captain Steph Houghton said Arsenal were “better in big moments” and deserved to progress on the balance of the tie.<\/p>\n
Brighton forward Fran Kirby added: “Arsenal allowed Chelsea to have the ball, they were comfortable in their block and defensively worked really hard.<\/p>\n
“With the opportunities that they had, they could even have gone on and won the game, so they will be really proud of the performance.<\/p>\n
“It showed a different side to Arsenal. It showed what they can do when they have to defend.”<\/p>\n
Arsenal will hope to book their place in the final when they take on the winner between Lyon and Wolfsburg – who play each other on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
The final takes place on 23 May in Oslo, Norway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slegers described an “unbelievable performance” in the second leg because of the fightback Arsenal knew Chelsea would give.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-508081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508081","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=508081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}