Rehanne Skinner hailed the way her West Ham United women’s team upped the ante in the second half of their 3-0 victory at home to Southampton in the Women’s League Cup.
The two teams went into the break with the score goalless after a first half that yielded few clear-cut chances, although Dagný Brynjarsdóttir missed a penalty on 38 minutes.
But the higher-league Hammers showed their quality in the second period, and broke the deadlock on the hour mark when Shelina Zadorsky netted her first goal for the Club from close range soon before Brynjarsdóttir’s cross was turned into her own net by Paige Peake.
The Hammers No.10 atoned for her miss from the spot when she fired in Skinner’s side’s third to secure the Irons’ spot in the final eight of the competition, via a 100 per cent record in Group C having scored a fantastic 13 goals in the process.
The Hammers boss was delighted with the way her side turned on the style in the second period, leaving them full of confidence heading into Sunday’s final match of the year at Villa Park.
We performed professionally and that’s credit to the players
We’ve got a 100 per cent record and different goalscorers again, and a clean sheet. The way that we performed today was really professional, we did all the bits that we needed to and made sure we got through the game positively so it’s a credit to the players.
Obviously a lot of people have got minutes which is important for us in preparation for the game against Aston Villa at the weekend. We're really delighted with the performance and to progress in the cup.
When you start with a new set of players, it changes the landscape and it’s about figuring the game out, and settling into it. For the first 15 minutes, naturally, we needed to settle into the game and that’s been the case in the other [Women’s League Cup] games to be honest.
But when we got hold of the game and settled into the flow of how we want to play, we’ve capitalised on all of the games and scored a lot of goals.
There are lots of positives to take from the game
It was a massive positive for Soraya [Walsh] starting her first game after being given a professional contract, Dagný [Brynjarsdóttir] scored her first goal since having Andreas, which is fantastic, and Daniella Way’s been on the pitch again - these are all positives.
The quality went up in the second half
I thought we weren’t moving Southampton enough [in the first half], and also [I told the players] to carry the ball a little bit more to engage players. Once we settled down on the ball and started to move it a little bit quicker, things started to open up and we found opportunities to play through them. The quality went up [in the second half].
The confidence levels are high ahead of Aston Villa
We’ve won two games this week, the players are in a great headspace and I think the confidence levels are high. We want to go and improve our away form, so it’s a big test at the weekend to make sure that we keep working in that direction.
We want to make sure that we give a good performance against Villa. We'd be delighted to finish the week with three wins, and that’s the intention so we can be in a better position in the table for Christmas.
