Lauren James netted a double and Sam Kerr made history as Chelsea cruised to a 3-1 victory at Leicester City to guarantee Women\u2019s Champions League football for next season.<\/strong><\/p>\n The second-placed Blues took control early on and went ahead after 13 minutes when Niamh Charles\u2019 cross was headed home at the far post by the clinical Australian international.<\/p>\n That goal marked Kerr\u2019s 64th in the Women\u2019s Super League, moving her past Fran Kirby to become Chelsea\u2019s all-time record goalscorer in the competition.<\/p>\n Against a struggling Leicester side, James (pictured) doubled the advantage in the 27th minute with a piece of individual magic, firing a \u201cno-look\u201d strike into the corner from the edge of the box.<\/p>\n The England star was at it again just six minutes later, lifting a clever free-kick over the wall and in off the crossbar to make it 3-0.<\/p>\n Leicester, who are headed for a relegation play-off, pulled a goal back through Shannon O\u2019Brien following an error by Lucy Bronze, but they never truly threatened a comeback.<\/p>\n With a Women\u2019s FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City looming next Sunday, Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor opted to make several second-half changes\u2014including withdrawing James\u2014to manage the squad\u2019s workload.<\/p>\n While the visitors were less fluid in the closing stages, they remained comfortably in charge to see out the win.<\/p>\n Although the league title is now mathematically out of reach with one game remaining, Manchester United\u2019s 1-1 draw with Brighton on Saturday means Chelsea are now certain of a top-three finish and a place in Europe.<\/p>\n Get the latest direct to your phone \u2013 follow West London Sport\u2019s WhatsApp channel<\/strong><\/p>\n Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lauren James netted a double and Sam Kerr made history as Chelsea cruised to a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Eyes on the cup<\/h2>\n
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