Chelsea Women's striker Sam Kerr has admitted that she is hopeful of maintaining a goalscoring run against Aston Villa, after the Aussie international hit four past Vllaznia in the UEFA Women's Champions League.
The Blues were on fire as the 29-year-old was on hand to smash home after latching on to a Pernille Harder through ball. Both players scored a combined seven goals on the night, alongside 'assists queen' - the words of assistant Paul Green - Guro Reiten.
But having netted four in Europe, amongst a three-game barren run in the Women's Super League, all the attention post-match was on Kerr who even admitted herself that the mini-drought was 'unusual'.
"Three games is a long time for me. No, I mean, it was nice," she reflected post-match an interview pitch side. “I’m paid to score goals but I also think I bring a lot to the team when I’m not scoring too, so it’s just about being patient and finding my groove. I did tonight and hopefully I can again against Villa.”
Reiten, Kerr and Harder will be three names Aston Villa Women's boss Carla Ward will be studying before the weekend's trip and the latter believes each has to play its part for the trio to be effective.
"It’s important with the confidence and I think you get that with every game you are playing and the feeling," Danish international Harder said. " We are starting to know each other really well. I know how Guro wants the ball. Guro knows how to put the ball into Sam and Sam knows how to put the ball in the goal. It’s great but there are also other players on the pitch that do really good today.!
She added on player of the moment, Kerr: "She’s done it [scoring four goals] one time before but it’s very impressive. I’m never going to be able to do that!”
Similarly, manager Paul Green, just like Harder and the rest of Kerr's teammates, has no doubts about the striker he believes is 'one of the best.'
Emma Hayes' assistant opened up in his post-match press conference on Wednesday night: "Sam’s a born goalscorer, she’s won the golden boot the last two seasons, we had no doubts about that. Getting four tonight is going to give her a lot of confidence. She scores goals, you look at her record across her career, we haven’t been worried about that at all. She’s certainly one of the world’s best strikers."
Whether or not Kerr can match Wednesday night's levels against an inconsistent but dangerous Villa opposition, one that took a 4-3 scalp on the opening weekend against Manchester City Women, remains to be seen, but the player who assisted Kerr for her first of the night is under no illusion about the step up in opponent that will be travelling to Kingsmeadow this weekend.
The former Wolfsberg goalscorer concluded: " We know we played very good today, we know on Sunday it will be a very different game. Aston Villa will be a better team, we will have to be even more focused and take each game one game at a time. Sunday is a different game and we will focus on that."
