Rehanne Skinner has urged West Ham United women's team to do whatever it takes to make sure that they come away with points from Sunday's Barclays Women's Super League fixture against Bristol City.
The Irons head to Ashton Gate to face the Robins, with both sides locked on five points heading into the game. A win for either team would help their ambitions to stay in the top division, but with plenty of games left in the 2023/24 campaign, it's certainly not the last opportunity to do so.
Having added three solid additions to the squad during the transfer window, Skinner is hoping that their impact will help to drive the team away from the bottom of the table.
Ahead of the clash in the South West, Skinner reflects on previous matches, recruitment and gives an update on team news...
Reflecting on last time out in the WSL
On Sunday [against Spurs], I thought we played really well all the way through the game. I'm a realist with it, I don't think we did enough to win the game, but I feel like we deserved a point.
Collectively, you can see the direction of travel with players when we're executing all the bits that we want to in terms of our playing style. It might not even be the prettiest of games at the weekend, but everybody's going to be fighting to get the three points and, and ultimately, we're going to do everything that we can to get to that point.
Whatever it takes, really, that's what we've got to be thinking about heading into the game.
Developing a style of play
I think for us, we've been a bit disappointed when we've just not quite got out into positions to get active pressure on the ball as well as we'd have liked. Opportunities have come from the edge of the box and things like that. When we've discussed it, and reflected on it by looking through the footage, we all feel like we could have been more proactive in those moments.
I think if we can get that part of it right, that then obviously makes life a little bit easier. Certainly, we've got the capabilities of scoring, and we've got multiple people who are capable of doing so. I don't think that's going to be an issue for us. It's just about concentration all the way through the game. That’s been one of the areas that we've wanted to add some experience into the team as well is to just help to the younger players to kind of evolve in that sense, so that we're making more consistent decisions.
We believe in always being on the front foot and trying to get pressure on the ball and anticipate the things that are going to lead to chances, it's just being a little bit sharper to those things.
It’s fine margins, isn't it? Because in this league, if you don't do those two yards, then a goal is scored, and that's something that we've learned the hard way in a couple of situations, and we certainly want to keep working on.
The squad and further recruitment
I said at the very start when I came into the Club, it was about evolving the squad and making sure that we had everyone that was the best fit for the Club.
In the summer because I came in late, we still had a little bit of money available because it wasn't really going to help us to get people at that time due to the way that we were trying to evolve our recruitment strategy, being very specific to the style of play, which we obviously have in place now.
We have a little bit left over which has helped us to strengthen with quality players in the form of Kristie, Mini and Shelina coming in during this window.
I've also got a responsibility to the whole squad for the younger ones that are going out on loan and gaining experience, which we obviously want to invest in for the future."
Talking team news
We’re looking fairly positive. We’ve had a couple of little knocks in games last Sunday and on Wednesday.
We’re hoping to be in a good position with all of those heading into Sunday.
