Women’s football round-up: Charlton’s fine start continues with big win over Leicester, Lionesses take a point while Palace lose at home to Villa

Doubles from Lily Agg and Liz Ejupi gave Charlton a 4-0 victory against Leicester City to keep up the pressure at the top of the FA Women’s Championship.

It was a dominating display by the visitors, who made it seven wins out of 10 in the league.

Charlton dominated from the opening whistle with their high pressing game forcing Leicester into mistakes.

It was this tactic that led to the opener when Ejupi forced Demi Lambourne into a mistake and found Agg who volleyed into the top corner.

Agg was causing the Foxes all sorts of problems and could have scored a hat-trick in the first 20 minutes.

She had a free-kick which went inches over the post and minutes later Charlotte Gurr punished some sloppiness in midfield and found Agg whose strike cannoned off the post.

Charlton were able to get a second after 40 minutes when Ejupi bundled the ball home after a goalmouth scramble.

Ejupi got her second just four minutes into the half before Agg headed in a fourth 60 seconds later.

Charlton manager Riteesh Mishra said: “We planned on it being a very tough game and we know Leicester are an incredibly fit athletic team. I think their league position is probably a false reflection of where they are at.

“They’ve got some very dangerous players. We came into the game well prepared but you never know against teams like this. They started off quite brightly but we began to gain composure and we really could have the game killed off in the first half but our finishing let us down a little bit.

“Our high pressing game is something we worked on. We can play in a variety of ways. I think on the surface today, if you put high pressure on we can force them into mistakes and that seemed to work for us.”

Sophie Jones’ second-half equaliser denied Millwall Lionesses a first league win of the season.

Ylenia Priest had put the South Londoners’ 1-0 ahead at Princes Park and then Evie Clarke’s touch let her down in front of goal just minutes later. Jones fired home the equaliser just 10 minutes after the break – Millwall felt they should have had a penalty for a foul on Clarke just before that.

Lionesses boss Chris Phillips said: “It was a good game and it’s a merit of the hard work the girls put in in training that we’re actually disappointed with a draw.

“I can’t fault our players’ work-rate or application. A draw was a fair result. We had a massive chance just after going 1-0 up but I’ll give Evie the benefit of the doubt that it bobbled before she could hit it.

“A result against Manchester United always looks bad [an 8-0 defeat last week] but their budget is 20 times bigger than ours. But I saw signs last week we were getting there and more so again here. We’re not there yet, we need a couple more levels but we’ll keep working on the training pitch.”

Nikita Whinnett netted for Crystal Palace Ladies but they lost 3-1 at home to Aston Villa.

Whinnett said: “We started way too slowly, we didn’t have the right attitude to approach the game, and I don’t think we expected Villa to start as quickly and as tenaciously as they did.

“They had a great first half and we conceded three very silly goals that we could have avoided, but we didn’t manage to do that.

“It’s our first season in this league and other teams are starting quicker than us, but in the second half we’re stepping up and giving them a game to play so it is another learning curve for us.

“We came here wanting to win, this is a game we could have won, we just didn’t turn up first half and by the time we did turn up it was too late to be honest.”

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