Rehanne Skinner has insisted her West Ham United women’s team ‘won’t be pulling back any punches’ and will ‘make life as difficult as possible’ for Crystal Palace in Sunday’s London derby at Chigwell Construction Stadium.
The Hammers return to Barclays Women’s Super League action this weekend following a three-week break filled with Women’s League Cup and international fixtures. And this weekend’s clash with bottom-of-the-table Crystal Palace presents an opportunity for the Irons to get back to winning ways after a narrow defeat to Brighton last time out in the league.
Buoyed by hitting London City Lionesses for four just under two weeks ago in the Women’s League Cup, to secure a commanding lead at the top of the Group C standings, the Irons head into the fixture against the Eagles full of confidence.
However, despite their position in the table, newly-promoted Crystal Palace will pose a threat to the Hammers as they continue to find their feet in their maiden WSL campaign. Skinner is determined to nullify the potential danger of the south London outfit, who are coached by someone she knows well in Laura Kaminski, having worked with her at Tottenham Hotspur.
And while the weekend marks a long-awaited return to league action, the visit of Palace will also see the Irons play their first fixture at Chigwell Construction Stadium in nearly a month.
Last time in Dagenham was pivotal for the women’s team, as they recorded their first victory of the season in the WSL, against Leicester City, and Skinner’s Claret and Blue army will hope they can put another side to the sword on Sunday, in what is set up to be a crunch clash of a London derby.
With just 48 hours until the visit of Kaminski’s side, the Hammers boss sat down in front of the media to discuss how her team head into Sunday full of confidence, how the staff have supported those who returned from international duty and how excited the squad is to play in front of the east London faithful again.
Team news
Everyone has returned from international duty in a good place, which is really positive.
Gaining confidence from recent performances
Our performance against Brighton was probably better [than against London City], it was tricky against London City, the wind made it a tough game for both teams.
I think the performance against Brighton was really strong, I thought we played really well. We created some good chances and scored a couple of good goals.
Obviously to get the four goals against London City is a massive confidence boost for us in front of goal. I thought the goals we scored were good, quality team goals, exploiting key areas and showing the quality in our attack when we do attack at pace.
It was good to finish with a game like that before the international break and be in a positive position, and it put us in a good position from a Women’s League Cup perspective as well with a game to go. The team's in a good place and we're looking forward to the game at the weekend now.
Determined to go into the Christmas break on a high
Anybody that’s watched our games knows we’ve been playing well. That's put us in a position where, when we go into this weekend, we have to be confident in what we're doing. There’s a long way to go, but we’ve got our own standards and targets we want to meet. We want to make sure we get as many points out of games as possible.
In some situations we’ve played so well and not quite got out of it what we felt we deserved at times. So, we want to make sure we finish these last two WSL games before Christmas in a more positive position, based on what we've been doing on the pitch.
It’s great to be back at home and we want to be difficult to beat in Dagenham
It’s fantastic to be at home in front of our fans. I’ve seen a significant shift in our ground since January. I think the Club's work on improving our fanbase has been exceptional, and it’s made our ground a lot harder of a place to come to.
We’ve been in the ground a little bit longer now as well, and I think it takes time to make it feel like your home. We want to make ourselves incredibly difficult to beat at home, those games are important to us.
Those first five games [of the season] were really tough, I don’t think anybody talks about how hard it is to go on the road. I know everybody has to do it, but we were literally top and bottom of the country, and it’s a big shift to go up to the north-west three times in four games. I think we played well in those games.
We won’t be pulling back any punches against Palace
It’s difficult coming into the league, it’s a hard place to be. For everyone involved in their club, they’ve done a really good job, they’ve recruited well and got some experience in the team. We don't expect an easy game at the weekend.
I've worked with Laura [Kaminski] before when I was at Tottenham, she was the Academy Coach there and she's been around the game a long time - she's clearly gained experience that will help her.
It's a tough league to be in, but they are doing well. We want to make sure we make life as difficult as possible for them this weekend, as always. We won't be pulling back any punches, we'll be going for it. It’s a London derby, we're not going to be messing about. It’ll be a good test and a really good game.
Managing players returning from different Women's Euro 2025 qualification campaigns
This is part of knowing your players and how they'll react to these different situations, making sure you support and look after the ones that had things not go the way that they wanted. I think sometimes they just need a way of venting that, and to know that they're supported in a Club setting.
Coming back into this [Club] setting is where you allow yourself to keep learning and improving, because it’s every single day. Everything we do here is to support their performance in this [Club] setting, to support their performance in that [international] setting. That’s something we make sure we look at with our performance staff, psychology, medical staff, performance, physical, technical staff, player care staff - all those things matter.
It’s tough being a high-performing athlete day in, day out, because you do have highs and you do have lows. Trying to manage the emotional consistency of that is something people don’t talk about enough, it's the hardest part of the game. Nobody’s in the WSL that can’t play football, it's not about that, it’s about the other bits around it.
We’re in a fantastic position to get a victory on Sunday
Every point is important, our preparation and plan is to always go out and give our best at the weekend, and trust the process that the performance will get us results. The things we’ve been doing and improving on take us into the game with Palace with confidence, and that's what's important to us.
We go into that game knowing we can give it a really good effort and we’re in a fantastic position to take three points out of it.
