Rehanne Skinner says that West Ham United women's team want to start fast in Sunday's Barclays Women's Super League fixture against Everton.
The Hammers are back in league action after a two week period without a game due to the international break, and Skinner is looking for her side to pick up points in the two remaining matches, starting with the clash against the Toffees this weekend.
In her pre-match press conference ahead of the game, the boss reflected on the international break and recent performances, whilst also discussing what Sunday's opponents may bring to the contest.
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We want to try and get points
We’ve had some really positive performances, and we want to turn that into an opportunity to get points on the board.
We feel like there’s been a couple of games where we’ve given a couple of things away at times when we were actually performing better than the scoreline reflected.
This game is an important one for us to get points on the board, and with the majority of the squad available, it presents a really good opportunity to do so.
The team has worked really well during the break that we’ve just had
Our players that have been away have got a good amount of minutes and performed well for their countries.
We’re approaching this game like we approach every game, which is to win. We’re really keen to try and get one over the line now, based on all of the effort that’s been put in and the way that we’re playing.
We've missed opportunities to get points on the board in past matches
I feel like we should be a little bit further forward than what we are at the moment, but at the same time, in terms of the way that we're developing on the pitch, this play in style, and the way that players are taking that on board, you know, and they're giving everything to it working incredibly hard on and off the pitch.
You can see the frustration of the players with a couple of mistakes here and there that have cost us goals, but that’s a learning curve. Everyone’s working really hard to deliver in those big moments consistently.
Between where we are and between seventh in the table, it’s four points. It’s still all so tight in the bottom half of the table, so it’s not a time to be worrying about where we are.
We know that we’re progressing in what we wanted to do. We know that we've put in some really good performances, we want to do that more consistently, and that's really the message that I've been given the players.
We want to start as quickly as we can against Everton
I don't think that we've done that in every single game and that's definitely something that we want to try and get right moving forwards.
They’ve been very similar to us in terms of that they’ve picked up some results, and then not been able to in other games.
They play a very specific style, and the players that are in there have had some experience of doing that as well with Brian [Sørensen]. We expect that they're going to be fairly cohesive in what they're trying to achieve.
It’ll be a tough challenge for us. They progress the ball and are able to capitalise on certain mistakes, as well as being tough where set-pieces are concerned, and we’ll need to be aware of that.
