The Chelsea Women squad has returned from their respective countries following last week’s international break and rejoined Emma Hayes and her staff at Cobham to prepare for the first of two semi-finals in the space of a week, as we travel to Aston Villa in the FA Cup on Sunday before hosting Barcelona at Stamford Bridge in the Champions League next Saturday.

Tickets for our Women's Champions League semi-final at Stamford Bridge are available now!

At least for the first of those two games, Hayes will be without Kadeisha Buchanan, who has joined her fellow centre-back Millie Bright on the injury list after a problem forced her to return early from international duty with Canada.

‘We won’t have Kadeisha available,’ confirmed Hayes. ‘I don’t have a timeline for Kadeisha’s return, but we’ll have no Kadeisha and no Millie this weekend.

‘Nothing changes because of that. We build a squad to prepare for these moments and players want this responsibility. There are players across our squad who want the opportunities, they want to continue to impress and the reality is we are a team full of international players, so we have the qualities to cope.

‘Other than those two, we’ve been fine after the international break and everybody is ready to go. I thought the whole team today looked really fresh considering, but we haven’t had any major travel and that really helps after an international break. Everybody’s come back in really good spirits with good freshness.’

We went into the international break on the back of good result against Sunday’s opposition, having beaten Aston Villa 3-0 away in our last Women’s Super League fixture, with Guro Reiten, Jelena Cankovic and Sam Kerr all finding the net at Bescot Stadium.

However, in part because of that result, Hayes is expecting a much tougher test the second time around in this weekend’s rematch, with the huge motivation of a place in arguably the biggest game of the English season spurring both teams on.

‘Every player and coach in this country want’s to be in the FA Cup final. It’s the showpiece event every year on the calendar, but we want to win everything and we haven’t won a trophy this year. It’s important we put ourselves in the best position possible on Sunday, but we have to remember that no two performances are the same.

‘When you play a team back-to-back, if you don’t do the basics and the fundamentals well enough then teams like Aston Villa will cause us problems. So my message to the team is to take care of the basics of football in a game away from home on a difficult pitch where Aston Villa’s aggression will be at a higher level than it was before.

‘I think the fact it’s a cup game will be different. I think Villa will be disappointed about their performance and I’d expect an aggressive Villa performance at home with a packed crowd. I think it will be a much different game, I think it will be a difficult game, anything can happen. There’s a cup final on the line and we will be prepared as we always are knowing at the end of the game we want to be going to Wembley.’

The FA Cup semi-final with Aston Villa isn't the only big game fast approaching for Chelsea Women, either, as we host Barcelona at Stamford Bridge in the first leg of the Women's Champions League semi-finals a week later, with kick-off at 12.30pm on Saturday 22 April.

Tickets for the home game against Barcelona are on sale now, with prices starting at £15 for adults and £8 for juniors and seniors. Click here to secure your seat!