Rehanne Skinner was delighted to come away with all three points in their first away fixture of the new campaign as the women’s team beat Brighton & Hove Albion 2-0 at Broadfield Stadium on Sunday.
The Hammers went ahead after 12 minutes in West Sussex, with Kirsty Smith reacting first to a rebounded strike from Riko Ueki to scramble the ball over the line from close range.
After half time, Ueki notched her first in Claret & Blue, nodding home a free-kick from Lisa Evans, which would ultimately seal the game.
Skinner’s side had to defend valiantly in the closing stages as the home side looked to find a way back into the contest in the ten added minutes at the end of the game. The team worked until the very end to preserve the clean sheet.
The boss was full of praise for the way that her side played at the full-time whistle, as they secured their first points of the 2023/24 campaign.
The team worked incredibly hard from start to finish
I’m really proud of the togetherness that the team showed out there today, the way that they went about the game and stuck to the game plan.
We created a lot of good chances and probably could have had five or six goals out of the game to be honest. But at the same time, at the other end, we did all of the bits in the game that are necessary to ride out the storm; it’s important that we’re able to do both sides well.
I though we showed huge character today and I’m delighted for the team
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.
I think she was a bit gutted that she missed the first chance really early on, but as well as getting a goal, she was creating opportunities for the team. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how it goes in, and we’re all really pleased for her to get on the scoresheet.
I said at half time that we needed to continue trying to apply ourselves within the game
I thought that we were playing really well, but there were a couple of really small tweaks that we made, for example, making sure that players were showing for the ball in the right areas.
After that, we started to try and play a little bit more, and you saw the desire and attitude out of possession to want to block and make sure that we weren’t allowing opposition players through, we were really effective at that today.
It was a really committed defensive performance all round, and as I said, it’s important that we’re able to do well in both parts of the game, which is what we did.
Credit to Lisa and Riko for our second goal
I though Lisa’s ball into the area was superb. Riko gets her timing right and is very effective – she actually scored a similar goal to that against Brighton when we played them in a behind- closed-doors fixture in pre-season.
It’s delivered into an area where she is a threat, and it’s such a quality ball in that you have to work really hard to defend those areas.
The finishers that came onto the pitch made sure that they were impactful
That’s what you need in a squad, we’ve got to be able to replace players with energy and the whole team has played a part in today’s result.
Huge credit to them for coming into a game where the crowd are getting a little bit lively. They’ve taken the emotions out of that and made sure that we’ve seen the team out with a clean sheet, we probably could have had a couple more goals when they came on too.
We want to play games and we will take this performance into the next one
Charlton on Wednesday will be a different prospect, it’s a short turnaround, and it will be again for Chelsea in the WSL on Saturday.
So it’s a busy time, but players love playing. We want to play games and it will help with us gelling as a team and improving on what we’re trying to do.
Next up, the women's team will face Charlton Athletic in the Continental Tyres League Cup! Purchase your tickets by clicking on the graphic below!
