Paul Konchesky said that West Ham United Women need to be more clinical in their upcoming matches if they are to continue climbing the table.
The Hammers were beaten 2-1 by Reading at the Select Car Leasing Stadium on Sunday afternoon – and the boss said that his side had enough chances to win the game.
In the first half, Amalie Thestrup and Honoka Hayashi both had numerous opportunities to put the east Londoners ahead, but couldn’t find a way past Reading goalkeeper, Grace Moloney.
The Royals then made them pay, with Charlie Welling firing the ball home on 66 minutes after the Irons failed to clear their lines. Konchesky’s side rallied, and when Izzy Atkinson delivered a delightful ball into the area, Viviane Asseyi made no mistake, slotting the ball beyond Moloney.
But the story wasn’t over, as Rachel Rowe smashed in what would prove to be a winner for the home side on 85 minutes, to end a disappointing day at the office for Konchesky and his team.
We had enough chances to put the game to bed in the first half.
We could have had four or five goals today if we’d have taken the chances that we had – particularly in the first 45 minutes – but listen, the game of football is 90 minutes and we weren’t clinical in their box and we didn’t defend our own well enough.
I think we had about 15 chances today, so to only be scoring one isn’t good enough
We need to be better in both boxes.
I need to look back on the goals we conceded – the second one in particular was a really good strike, but I feel as though we could have done better in the build-up for both of the goals.
It was a really good goal from Vivi.
The ball in from Izzy is fantastic and Vivi arrived just at the right time to be able to slot it home and give us a chance of going on and winning it, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to do that.
I just think today it wasn’t falling for a number of our players in front of goal – Izzy had a brilliant opportunity to score at the back post towards the end.
I’m pleased for Vivi to be back amongst the goals, hopefully that will give her some confidence going into next weekend’s game against Aston Villa.
I thought Lucy Parker was fantastic in the role that we asked her to do.
We had to make a change earlier this morning and we decided to put Lucy into the midfield because she’s been training really well.
I think you could see that he had the bit between her teeth – she put herself about and had a lot of energy. She did everything that we asked of her today and I’m really pleased with her performance in a role that she’s not familiar with.
We’ll have to assess how Dagny is this week ahead of Aston Villa
She had a little bit of trouble last night and didn’t feel well enough to play today, wo we’ll have to speak to the medical team and see how she goes.
We have to move on now and focus on Aston Villa.
It’s going to be a really tough game, we’ve played them twice, so we know what we’re going to be up against. We have to regroup and stick together, being at home, hopefully we will get the support that we deserve, and our fans get behind the players.
We’ll work hard in training and look to get a positive result next weekend against Villa.
