Rehanne Skinner was disappointed with the performance that West Ham United women’s team produced in their final Continental Tyres League Cup group stage fixture against Birmingham City on Wednesday evening.
The Irons fell to a 2-1 defeat to the Barclays Women’s Championship side, and didn’t reach the performance levels that they had done in previous matches so far in 2024.
The Blues struck on 18 minutes when Lily Agg headed home, then doubled their advantage just after the break when Martha Harris fired in from distance.
Riko Ueki was able to pull a goal back with a header right at the end of the contest, but it was too little too late for Skinner’s team on a lacklustre evening in the Midlands.
Skinner reflected on the result with West Ham TV at the full-time whistle…
I’m really disappointed.
I think this is the first time this season where I didn’t feel that the basics were good enough. We didn’t come out of the changing room in the first half well enough, we were too slow to things, and we didn’t work hard enough, and that’s not something that I’ve been able to say.
In every other game, the positives that we’ve been able to take out of the performance have been the way that the players have been chipping away at the way that we’re trying to play.
The thing is, in terms of work rate and attitude, those are things that you you’ve just got to want to have, and we haven’t had that tonight.
At half-time, we spoke about that and said that it was completely unacceptable. In the second half, we started to fight a little bit harder and were able to create some chances, but it was too little too late. We’ve got to reflect on that to make sure we move forward ready for Sunday.
We played really well on Sunday, so it is disappointing not to follow that up.
We deserved to get a point out of the game on Sunday, but to go from that to tonight’s performance in such a short space of time is not the character that we want within the team and the way that we want to play.
It’s not what we want to portray to our fans, and we’re really grateful to them for travelling today as well.
We’ve always been able to talk really positively about the attitude, the work ethic and the resilience, the never-say-die to the end, and we were certainly better towards the end of the game. First half in particular, we were just way off the pace.
We’ve got to reflect on the performance ready for the weekend.
It doesn’t matter who you play, you have to be able to turn up and give the best version of yourself every single time, and I don’t think we did that today. We’ve got to reflect on that.
Players spoke in the huddle at the end about taking accountability for that, watching the game back and making sure that they’re prepared to come into training on Friday ready for the weekend against Bristol City.
Everyone has got to stand up and be counted heading into Sunday.
That’s the players, staff, everyone involved. We look at it every single day and reflect in detail, constantly trying to be better. It’s really important that the players take that time to reflect heading into the next game, and make sure that we put actions into what’s happened today and we come back stronger, and together we will.
