Lisa Evans believes West Ham United Women can be happy with their showing in defeat against Manchester City.
The Irons fell to a narrow 1-0 loss at Chigwell Construction Stadium, with Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw scoring the only goal of the game for City in a competitive contest.
The home side went close on several occasions throughout the 90 minutes in Sunday’s first league outing of 2023, and Evans feels the overall performance was worthy of merit.
The forward acknowledged, however, that the team should be picking up points from such showings.
“I thought it was a really good performance,” Evans said. “Apart from the goal we conceded, I thought we were solid. I thought Manchester City didn’t really have many chances in the game, and we could have snuck a goal.
“Overall, we’re happy with the performance but, at the end of the day, we’re at home and we want to be winning these games. We’re unfortunate not to get anything out of it.
“Maybe we could have pressed higher in the first half and, in the second half, I feel like we had a lot more energy about us and did press higher. Maybe we gave them too much grace but, overall, I think our performance was good.”
One such opportunity to score came late in the first half when a corner caused havoc in the City area.
Dagný Brynjarsdóttir, Grace Fisk and Abbey-Leigh Stringer all went close in the space of just a few seconds as a panicked City scrambled to clear the ball from danger.
“I thought it was over the line!” Evans admitted. “I was celebrating. But those are the chances in football you need to take.
“You don’t often get those chances against the likes of Manchester City and, when you do, you have to take them. On another day, that goes in and we’re a goal up and then it’s a totally different game.”
West Ham have enjoyed their best-ever start to a Barclays Women’s Super League season and Evans says the team are eager to continue on in the same form, with the games coming thick and fast in January.
We want to continue on as we’ve done,” she added. “Paul has us really well drilled in training and, while we don’t have the biggest squad, we just need to find that consistency.
“We don’t lack any belief. I think we’ve shown that we’re more than capable of taking points off anyone this season. We’re capable of scoring goals, especially from set-pieces, and we certainly back ourselves to match up against anyone.”
