Chelsea Women 8-0 Vllaznia: Kerr scores four in Champions League rout

Chelsea Women 8-0 Vllaznia Femra: Sam Kerr scores four and Pernille Harder bags a hat-trick as ruthless Blues claim back-to-back wins in the Champions League

• Sam Kerr scored four goals as Chelsea recorded an emphatic victory
• Pernille Harder bagged a hat-trick in thrashing of Albanian minnows
• The Blues moved two points clear of Real Madrid at the top of Group A

Sam Kerr starred with four goals as Chelsea made it back-to-back wins in the Champions League with a 8-0 thrashing of Albanian minnows Vllaznia.

Pernille Harder also managed a hat-trick while Katerina Svitkova was the other player on target in a convincing victory.

The Blues got their group stage campaign off to a perfect start with a 1-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain last week and the French side’s 0-0 draw with Real Madrid earlier in the day gave them the chance to put some distance between themselves and their rivals.

Chelsea forward Sam Kerr celebrates with trademark flip after scoring the fifth goal

It will be a straight fight between Chelsea, PSG and Real for qualification for the knockouts so it is vital the Blues take six points off Vllaznia, the weakest team in the group.

The Albanian side were overwhelmed by Chelsea’s quality and struggled to get out of their own half for the majority of the 90 minutes.

‘It was a great performance, we asked them to try and have a fast start and we did that,’ said Chelsea’s general manager Paul Green.

‘Our patience, our speed across the pitch was really good. We knew it would be difficult to break down the low block, but I thought we did it really well. It couldn’t have gone any better.

‘It was always going to be important to follow up last week’s great result in Paris, to get the home win against the lowest ranked team in the group was always going to be the case, we needed to follow that up which I think we did very convincingly tonight.

Kerr starred with four goals as Chelsea made it back-to-back wins in the Champions League

‘It puts us in a good position in the group to be top of it but we know there’s still a long way to go, we’re only match day two. We go again in November when we face back-to-back games against Real Madrid. We’ve put ourselves in a good position but there’s still a hell of a lot of work to be done to ensure we get through to the latter stages.’

They were, however, cheered on by a large and noisy contingent of fans who let off flares and pyrotechnics in the closing stages of the game.

There was a brief delay as one flare had to be removed from the pitch after the seventh goal. Officially, 420 Albanians bought tickets but there looked to be more than 500 away supporters inside Kingsmeadow. Chelsea’s Albanian forward Armando Broja was also in attendance.

‘They were certainly lively behind that goal,’ Green said of the Vllaznia fans. ‘[It’s a] first at Kingsmeadow [to see flares]. First in a Chelsea women’s game since I’ve been here. They travelled in numbers. They added to a great atmosphere, maybe got a little bit carried away throwing things on the pitch but in the main I thought they added to the atmosphere.’

Chelsea are now top of Group A, two points clear of Real Madrid – who they play in four weeks time.

Pernille Harder bagged a hat-trick as Chelsea thrashed Albanian minnows Vllaznia

It was one-way traffic at the start of the first half as Chelsea peppered the Vllaznia goal with a flurry of shots before Kerr found the net in the 10th minute. Harder’s pass put the forward through on goal and she chipped the ball over goalkeeper Kaylin Williams-Mosier.

Two goals in two minutes then put the Blues out of sight before half-time. Kerr grabbed her second as she tapped-in Guro Reiten’s cross from the left before Reiten then played through Harder, who finished into the bottom right corner.

Chelsea continued to mount attack after attack as the game resumed and Kerr completed her hat-trick 15 minutes into the second half, heading in Reiten’s corner from close range.

The forward then scored a fourth three minutes later. Harder played in Reiten down the left and she teed up Kerr in the box, who finished smartly into the bottom right corner before bringing out her trademark back-flip celebration.

‘Sam’s a born goalscorer,’ said Green. ‘Getting four tonight is going to give her a lot of confidence. She scores goals, you look at her record across her career, we haven’t been worried about that at all. She’s certainly one of the world’s best strikers.’

Kerr was taken off shortly after her fourth goal while Vllaznia changed their goalkeeper, but it didn’t get any easier for the visiting team. Harder made it 5-0 in the 72nd minute, forcing the ball over the line after a goal-mouth scramble from a corner.

Katerina Svitkova was also on target for the home side in a convincing victory

A seventh goal came six minutes later as another fine Chelsea move cut open the Vllaznia defence. Harder played in Alsu Abdullina down the left and her cross picked out Katerina Svitkova, who headed into the top left corner.

Harder then completed her hat-trick, firing into an empty net after Svitkova’s shot had been parried by substitute goalkeeper Viona Rexhepi.

Vllaznia manager Nikolin Leka admitted his team ‘did not expect’ to be thrashed in such a brutal manner.

‘We didn’t expect to be thrashed in this way,’ Bolic said. ‘Our team was not prepared for this kind of game, when a few of the goals went in our team’s head went down and we lost hope.

‘It was an experience for us a new club, we have only been in this field 14 years and now we are coming against a giant football club like Chelsea…this wasn’t only due to Chelsea being a big club and they outplayed us, this was also [due to] some mistakes made by our team, we shouldn’t have made those but we have learnt from them and we will move forward and see where we go from here.

‘It was quite a big crowd tonight, the crowd were behind us although we lost by a massive margin our supporters were behind us all the way.’

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