West Ham United women’s team manager Rehanne Skinner has hailed her side for turning up the levels in their performances as they look to chalk up back-to-back victories at Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday.
The Hammers travel to the south coast buoyed by their first win of the campaign, against Leicester City on Sunday, which moved Skinner’s outfit up to ninth in the Barclays Women’s Super League standings.
The Irons boss has been delighted with the performances in recent weeks, reveling in how they have improved their link-up play in the attacking third and standing resolute at the back, and hopes to see her side maintain the same intensity levels at the Amex Stadium.
But Skinner is aware of the test that Saturday’s opponents pose, as they sit third in the table with two defeats to their name.
Here’s everything the Hammers manager said to the media in her pre-match press conference on Wednesday afternoon…
Team news
Li Mengwen is not available, as her parent club is Brighton. Other than that, we’re in the same position as we have been, so we’re in a good place.
We’ve pushed the levels up
We've played really well since the international break, adding the in-possession stuff to our game has been much, much better, and I think that has elevated everybody.
Now we've got everybody settling into the team and understanding what we're trying to do, it's adding value to the wider group. It’s competitive, that’s always good because it makes people work really hard and that’s giving us the chance to push the levels up, I think that showed at the weekend.
The confidence on the ball we had against Leicester was really good and the players' confidence from that was great, understandably. I think we also created a lot of chances, which was a real plus.
The win has given us a boost in terms of our capabilities on the ball. You want to try and go on a bit of a roll and keep the momentum going.
Brighton pose a tough test
Personnel wise, they've got some top players in their squad and in the transfer window I thought they did a great job. Those players have settled in nicely into their style of play. They’re moving the ball really well and they’re creating problems for people.
The game will be difficult, but that's not something that's new to us. Every game's difficult in this league. It’s not necessarily about Brighton, it’s every week we turn up and we know it doesn’t matter who we’re playing, it’s going to be a really tough game.
All we can do is control ourselves and do what we can with what we're trying to achieve, and hope that creates problems for Brighton as well, given the form we’ve been in has been really positive.
We’re looking forward to playing at the Amex in front of our travelling fans
The biggest thing is, we want to make sure we play in the best stadiums that we can. The players love it, they really enjoy going into those settings. Our West Ham fans have been superb, they've been all over the country with us already and we've had some long journeys.
I've got no doubt we'll have a good following this weekend. We bring a lot of noise anyway, so I think that will help us, but other than that, we’re there to focus on the football and make sure we do the best job we can to get the points.
Goal difference plays a part as the season progresses
Goal difference definitely plays a part. Forwards are always the most expensive players and that's just the nature of it. Goal-scoring is tough, it’s a lot of pressure all the time, it involves a lot of creativity, a lot of confidence. When you get into a roll with it, you see people getting lots of goals in a sequence and that’s where we’re building to.
We've got good quality within the team and we want to utilise that, but we've maybe not had the right relationships to exploit that as much as we could have done. In the last two games, we've seen our capabilities of getting in and around the box, which we've worked really hard on.
Vivi's goal at the weekend was really positive, we've scored from set plays, when you start to chip away at both of those elements, you can get more goals. If we keep working on the defensive stuff to keep clean sheets, like the one at the weekend, then the goal difference does play a part as time goes on.
Our attackers are building good relationships
We want to try and get Vivi in those goal-scoring positions, like we did against Leicester, as much as possible.
With the work that Riko does, alongside Paví and Seraina Piubel, and other payers like Oona Siren, Dagný Brynjarsdóttir and Emma Harries, there's loads of different options we have to be able to go into that attacking line-up.
Vivi did a good job at the weekend and her link-up with Paví will help, they both speak Spanish.
Collectively, the more we work on their relationships, the more opportunities we'll get and that will be the key thing for the forwards.
