Chelsea and Manchester City won away to Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest respectively in the Vitality Women’s FA Cup 4th Round.
Aston Villa 1-3 Chelsea (Att: 1,093)
Nottingham Forest v Manchester City (Att: 3,994)
Chelsea began their defence of the Cup with a comfortable 3-1 away win over Aston Villa.
Guro Reiten opened the scoring for Chelsea with a perfect first touch, turn and finish from a Jess Carter pass.
It was 2-0 inside the half-hour when Reiten won a penalty which Pernille Harder converted comfortably past Hannah Hampton, who did save a 20-yard Fran Kirby strike seconds later.
Reiten found the net again just after the hour mark, firing home under pressure from Kirby’s pass.
Deep into added time, Ramona Petzelberger was bundled over in the box by Niamh Charles and the Villa player got to her feet to net the resulting penalty.
Stanway becomes all-time topscorer for eight-goal Man City
Manchester City eased past third-tier hosts Nottingham Forest in front of nearly 4,000 at the City Ground.
Caroline Weir took only a couple of minutes to give Manchester City the lead from outside the box.
The lead was doubled on 34 minutes when as Lauren Hemp’s corner was headed in by Kadija Shaw, Filippa Angeldahl adding the third before the break after being put through on goal by Alex Greenwood.
Georgia Stanway scored from a tight angle, Hemp made it 4-0 and Shaw then got her second of the game.
Stanway turned in a Jess Park cross to become Manchester City’s all-time leading goalscorer with her 63rd goal, overtaking Nikita Parris, before then completing her hat-trick.
