Rehanne Skinner was pleased with the character and resilience shown by West Ham United women's team as they scored a late equaliser to draw with Liverpool in a 1-1 draw on Sunday afternoon.
The Hammers had fallen behind just after half time, as Marie Höbinger opened the scoring by firing a strike into the bottom corner on 52 minutes.
However, as they have shown in their previous for fixtures this season, the Hammers rallied and eventually found the back of the net in second half stoppage time. Riko Ueki scrambled the ball over the line to score her second goal in Claret & Blue.
Skinner was pleased with the reaction from her players in the second half, as they found a way to come away with a point from the clash against the Reds.
She spoke to West Ham TV at the full time whistle and reflected on the point...
I always felt like the goal was going to come at the end
Overall, we showed character and resilience as a team to keep going until the end, showing that never-say-die attitude that we've talked about over the last couple of weeks.
Could we have started faster? That's something we were disappointed with at half time if I'm honest. I thought that we could have been a little bit more aggressive in our press, which is why we changed the structure at half time.
That enabled us to grow into the game a lot more, and I thought that our finishers did a really excellent job again today.
The change at the break allowed us to be more positive on the front foot
The more you work with players, the more you see their capabilities and when it's down to them in terms of using their strengths to get back into the game.
There was a moment where I thought the game suited certain people to come onto the pitch and change things. I also felt that the front three weren't able to press as high as I wanted them to. We just weren't able to be effective higher up the pitch, and the change in shape allowed us to do so.
The momentum shifted in our favour towards the end of the game and we showed huge amounts of character to come away with a point, which is what we're about at West Ham.
We're definitely making progress, and we've shown that
It's been a lot of change and there's a lot of changes in the way that we're trying to play, operate and generally do things.
We've got four points on the board, we've had a win in the Conti Cup. We're learning every single game to move ourselves forward in a way that's going to be successful for the long term.
There's a long way to go still, but when we reflect on the games that we've had, you can see the progression that's being made.
Consistency is the key in the next block of games, the way we start games, the way we finish games. There's still parts that we're not quite there with, but we're certainly working towards that.
The international break presents opportunities for us to work on certain things
It's an opportunity to fine tune people's roles and responsibilities. We can work on anything that an individual player needs to brush up on, whether that be strengths or weaknesses.
We've got a couple of players who are close to being available for selection, so that's going to help strengthen the squad after the international break.
We'll work closely with the group of players that we have so that we're in a good place when the team comes together before the match against Bristol City
After the international break, the women's team welcome Bristol City to Chigwell Construction Stadium! Click on the graphic below to purchase your tickets now!
