2015 - Quarterfinals

Draw: 1 September
Played: 12/13 September

Birmingham vs Chelsea
Bristol vs Liverpool
Notts County vs Reading
Arsenal vs Man City

That's a pretty dull round bar Arsenal-City and even then you have to question whether the contrasting form of the two side actually makes that one a contest. Still, it should lead to some interesting semis anyway.

I hope Reading knock Notts out. Nobody deserves the amount of cup draw luck they have gotten this season. WSL2 opposition all the way to the FA Cup final and now they get a WSL2 side for the Conti QF as well. It's borderline cheating 

Anonymous wrote:I hope Reading knock Notts out. Nobody deserves the amount of cup draw luck they have gotten this season. WSL2 opposition all the way to the FA Cup final and now they get a WSL2 side for the Conti QF as well. It's borderline cheating 

They surely gave a £50 notes to someone at the FA

It will be interesting to see the teams that Man City and Arsenal field. I also wouldn't be surprised if Birmingham knicks a win off of Chelsea. Another easy draw for Notts.

Everybody bar City and Liverpool will play their prior game on the 5/6th Sept which means they have a week of prep and should therefore be able to field a rested full strength side. The postponed City-Liverpool league game is being played on the 10th so they will presumably only have three days. That is advantage Arsenal and Bristol, but to what degree remains to be seen. We go into the international break after these quarterfinals so nobody will be approaching them with one eye on their next fixture which should again allow for full strength teams to be fielded.

@FAWSL: .@MCWFC have been charged with fielding an ineligible player in @ContiUK Cup

http://t.co/nFgX8bgu92 http://t.co/fbJZKjgc06

Well, Man City got the FA to postpone their league game with Liverpool till after the summer break so they had field a full side, is this their way to postpone their Quaterfinals so their team is more rested?  Because with the love affair that the FAWSL is currently having with Man City I can't see them being kicked out of the Conti Cup.

Bardsley, Bronze, Stokes, Houghton, Radtke (Walsh), Beattie, Scott, Christiansen, Duggan, Parris, Corboz (Johnston)

Corboz?

This Sunderland game was the seventh game to played after the WC break and two of the games which came prior were Conti group games as well. How on earth was somebody ineligible?

Guest wrote:Bardsley, Bronze, Stokes, Houghton, Radtke (Walsh), Beattie, Scott, Christiansen, Duggan, Parris, Corboz (Johnston)

Corboz?

Corboz played in the two group matches which came before the Sunderland one so it's unlikely to be her otherwise you'd have thought she would be ineligible for them all. 

Is it possibly Walsh? Her substitution into the game was her first back from injury and I think I'm right in saying she hadn't played until the second half of the season. Given the length of time between the league resuming and the ineligible fielding, it could be very possible that she wasn't eligible for the league games she has featured in either.

Guest wrote:This Sunderland game was the seventh game to played after the WC break and two of the games which came prior were Conti group games as well. How on earth was somebody ineligible?

More like, how on earth was somebody ineligible for this match but eligible for any they played in after it. Surely if you aren't eligible by August then you just aren't eligible to play full stop. Otherwise what is the point of registration windows if you can be registered outside of them.

Reading had no chance of progression at the time they were expelled last season. City have progressed and have subsequently been found to have made the same infraction which Reading did. If City are allowed to remain in the competition it would send a very clear message that the more successful you are the less severe your punishment would be.

One club being expelled is the precedent set. Kick out City and kick out any other club who goes on to field ineligible players in the future. All of this grey area management committee discretion stuff is going to open up one hell of a can of worms if it continues because the fielding of ineligible players is turning out to be a regular occurrence for this league.

I'd like to know who brought this to the FA's attention.

I was under the impression that the FA assess team sheets and match reports after the fact and that if anything untoward is spotted in regards to who steps onto the pitch they slap a charge on you. I don't see how anybody but the FA and the club who the player plays for would be aware of a registration status.

So the FA is that back logged that they didn't catch a discrepancy on a team sheet for a game that took place several weeks ago? Also they allowed the quarterfinals draw to take place without knowing for sure that all teams in the hat actually were eligible to be there?

Arsenal fielded Chapman on Aug 3rd and once the back and forth discussion between the club and the FA was concluded by Arsenal not contesting the charge it was mid-September. In contrast, when Reading fielded Horwood last season they were kicked out and the matter resolved within a week. Either the Arsenal case was and this City case is particularly complex and so sorting it all out is taking an awfully long time, whereas the Reading case was cut and dry - or the FA are sitting on things until a more opportune moment to deal with it comes along. And by more opportune I mean any punishment doesn't impact on proceedings (see Arsenal already being out of the title race by the time the FA took their points off them and City still being able to top the group even with their deduction).

As already alluded to in other posts, the length of time and number of games between the transfer window closing and the Sunderland game in question suggests this could be a very complex matter, i.e whoever the ineligible player was has been fielded multiple times. So the complexity may again be accounting for the fact it has taken several weeks to reach this point.

Guest wrote:Is it possibly Walsh? Her substitution into the game was her first back from injury and I think I'm right in saying she hadn't played until the second half of the season. Given the length of time between the league resuming and the ineligible fielding, it could be very possible that she wasn't eligible for the league games she has featured in either.

If we are to believe that the ineligible fielding happened for the first time in this Sunderland match then only Walsh would explain why we got all the way to August 15th before somebody spotted an ineligible player because she didn't feature in the second half of the season until this Sunderland game. That is the only way to account for the ridiculously long gap between the transfer window closing and the player being spotted.

But - she played two games at the start of the season before picking up the injury which kept her out until August 15th. Was she ineligible for those two games at the start of the season also? Or was she but something happened to need to re-register her and it wasn't done properly? Either could mean she has in fact been ineligible to play multiple matches.

If the team sheet was checked after the match and an official spotted that there was an ineligible player, surely Man City would have rectified that immediately and registered her properly. So the Sunderland game would presumably be the only game in question. Again if true, then the FA knew at the time of the querterfinals draw that Man City had fielded an ineligible player and still kept them in the tournament, meaning they have no intentions of disqualifying Man City and only deducting points. As a poster has said "And by more opportune I mean any punishment doesn't impact on proceedings". I'm cynical enough to believe that this is coming to light now as a way to postpone the quarterfinal match against Arsenal since they played a game only Thursday and wanted more time to prepare. I don't see this impacting Man City's league standing.

As far as I understand it you are only able to register players during the transfer windows as this is the true purpose of them despite them being called transfer windows not registration windows. And since the window closed weeks before this Sunderland game in question, no matter how quickly City were informed that their player was ineligible it should have been too late for them to correct it and get her registered. Hence why people are speculating that if she was ineligible on Aug 15 she should also be ineligible for every game which came after, as well as all the games in the period before it between the window closing and Aug 15.

Bristol 1 - 4 Liverpool
scorers: Boho-Sayo 38' - Dowie 33' 53' 63' 90'

Birmingham 1 - 0 Chelsea
scorers: Potter 53'

Notts County 3 - 2 Reading
scorers: Whelan 34' Greenwood 38' 88' - Ward 36' Fletcher 67'

I wasn't expecting that result between Birmingham and Chelsea. I'm sure the latter will claim they had one eye on a more important prize, although I'm sure many will view it as them having thrown away a treble. The other two games went the way I expected but Reading almost made it by the looks of the goal times. 

Chelsea out and City possibly yet to be binned could throw this cup wide open.

I wasn't terribly surprised. Chelsea has a league title to not lose and the CL to concentrate on. They don't need the added fixtures of the Conti Cup, especially since they already won the FA Cup. I honestly don't see any club winning a treble anytime soon even with City trying to buy up all the England players.