Ahead of West Ham United women's team's Continental Tyres League Cup match against Charlton Athletic, Rehanne Skinner penned her Official Programme notes! You can read them below!
Good evening and a warm welcome to Chigwell Construction Stadium for this evening’s Continental Tyres League Cup match against Charlton Athletic.
I’d like to extend a warm welcome to Karen Hills, her staff and players ahead of tonight’s game here in east London.
We’re coming into this evening’s game off the back of picking up our first victory of the season, a 2-0 win against Brighton & Hove Albion on Sunday!
I was really pleased with the togetherness that the team showed throughout the game; they had to work incredibly hard from start to finish and stuck to the gameplan.
We dominated large portions of the game, controlled possession in the way that we want to do more consistently, which was really pleasing.
We showed a huge amount of character and did all the necessary things to ride out the storm when Brighton came at us towards the end.
I was delighted for Kirsty [Smith] and Riko [Ueki] to grab their first goals for the Club. Kirsty did great in making sure that she followed up the chance to get her goal. She has been incredibly influential throughout the whole of pre-season and I think she’s playing really well.
Riko got her timing right for her goal after Lisa [Evans] had delivered a wonderful ball into the area. I know that will be the first of many for Riko this season, and hopefully that will only build her confidence after grabbing her first goal in a new league and country.
To pick up a clean sheet was also fantastic, and it was a really committed defensive performance all round. You could see the desire and attitude out of possession to put bodies on the line and make sure that we weren’t allowing opposition players through, we were really effective at that.
I’d like to thank our fans that made the trip down to Crawley to support us. The players and staff really appreciate you taking the effort to travel and support us, and hopefully you enjoyed watching us pick up the three points!
Tonight’s game against Charlton will be a different prospect. They’ve started the season well in a really competitive division, so we’ve got to make sure we continue to do all the good things that we did well on Sunday.
We want to do well in all of the competitions that we’re in this season and the Conti Cup is no different. It’s a quick turnaround between matches this week, so it’s a test of the whole squad, because you need everyone when you've got three games in quick succession.
It's an opportunity for us to try and ensure that everybody is involved and contribute in a way that essentially uses our entire squad to help us to get results.
Thank you again for your fantastic support, and we hope to put on another performance that will send you home happy!
COME ON YOU IRONS!
Rehanne
