SCOTT Booth said his players had produced one of their best performances of the year after they recovered from losing an early goal to reach the last-16 of the Champions League for a second successive season.
Booth went with the same side which had won 1-0 in Moscow but his players received an unexpected shock in the third minute. The ball was slipped through the centre of the City defence to striker Kristina Komissarova – who then paused to check that the flag hadn’t gone up for offside.
Despite the momentary hesitation the Chertanovo forward still had a clear run at goal and she sent a low left footed shot past Lee Alexander.
That gave the Russian side a valuable away goal, but the home side only had to wait another three minutes for an equaliser. Clare Shine did the spadework and Lauder scored from close range.
READ MORE: Rangers lay down a marker with contracts for women’s team
Their overall advantage restored, City could have had a quick second, but Rachel McLauchlan’s 25 yard shot was tipped on to the bar and over. The home side then nearly conceded what would have been a disastrous second away goal for Chertanovo, but Jo Love used all her experience to prevent Viktoriya Dubova from being put clear on Alexander.
City’s second goal, from Shine following a corner just before the half hour, seemed to set the second half up for more goals but Chertanovo – surprisingly for a side having a dreadful domestic season – stuck to their task until McLauchlan finally got the goal she deserved.
Her powerful shot from 20 yards midway through the second half gave goalkeeper Diana Ponomareva no chance. Lauder got the fourth with 15 minutes remaining.
“We got caught with something that we know Chertanovo do – but the most important thing was the reaction to losing the goal,” the Glasgow City head coach said. “I thought the players were magnificent and we looked dangerous all night.
“Reaching the last-16 is the bit that’s exciting – we’re waiting for the draw on Monday now to see what the next adventure is. It says a lot about the players that we’ve made it two years in a row.”
Hayley Lauder, who scored two on the night, added: “We showed everybody tonight who we are. I think I lack goals a lot of the time so I’m delighted to have got these ones.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here