Rehanne Skinner said that West Ham United women’s team have to find a way to bring consistency to their performances after losing 5-0 away to Manchester United in the Barclays Women’s Super League on Sunday.
It was a tough afternoon at Leigh Sports Village for Skinner’s team, who were behind after only three minutes when Geyse nodded in the opening goal after Hinata Miyazawa’s shot had taken a deflection into her path.
Then, before half time, Millie Turner scored with a curling strike before Nikita Parris made it three moments later as she squeezed a shot in from close range before referee Phoebe Cross blew for half time.
In the second half, the Hammers were much improved, and created a number of good opportunities, particularly through the ever-lively Riko Ueki and the dangerous set-piece deliveries of Lisa Evans.
For 40 minutes, Skinner’s side played with positivity, but that would fade in the closing stages, as Lucía García and Melvine Malard both scored late on to seal a heavy defeat up in Manchester.
To add to the frustrations of the result, the Hammers lost both Honoka Hayashi and Viviane Asseyi due to injury in the first half.
Skinner was disappointed that her side were not able to continue with the positive second half showing right until the end of the game, as well as with the way proceedings began.
We didn’t start well in the first half.
We had a lot of disruptions in terms of injuries early on into the first half, so that created issues for us. We struggled to get into the flow of what we wanted to do in this game, which was a real challenge.
That’s what we spoke about at half time, and in the second half you could see a clear improvement in the way that we pressed, our intent to make life difficult, and we managed to get a foothold in the game and create opportunities in and around the box, we could have been more ruthless with those.
Towards the end, we switched off and we’re disappointed with the last two goals, probably more than the other three, actually, just in terms of how we didn’t continue with the press in the way that we wanted to, which gave them the time and the space to score.
Before the goals in the second half, you could see who we are and what we’re trying to work towards.
You can certainly see what we’re about and the direction of travel that we’re trying to go in, but you can’t afford to switch off and allow time and space in and around our defensive third in that period of the game.
In previous games, I’ve got to be honest, we’ve been great towards the end of games, and really proactive. This is the first time that it’s been an issue for us, so we need to reflect and review that and make sure that we look at how we resolve that moving forward next week.
I haven’t got any updates yet on Honoka or Viviane.
Vivi’s collision has unfortunately affected her teeth quite significantly, and that was a big blow for us to be honest. We’re looking at what the solution is for her.
Hono is in a boot, but that’s more of a protective measure for now. We’ll assess her over the coming days and see where we are.
We’re still a work in progress.
Performances were really positive up until the international break, and for 40 minutes today, we showed that again. I’ve said right from the start that we’re not going to get everything we want straight off the bat, and we’ve got to make sure that the whole squad is ready to help us keep moving forward.
When you play against good teams and make a couple of mistakes, they will punish you, and that’s where we’ve got to make sure that we’re really tight.
Ultimately, everything we’re working towards is playing in the West Ham way, the way we want to play football, and just being consistent with that. Being consistent with the way that you want to play in this league is the biggest challenge, so we have to keep working really hard to stick to our plan and stick to the way we want to play, as well as delivering that from the first whistle.
