Manager Rehanne Skinner wants to see the same determination, application and desire that her side displayed in their victory over Brighton & Hove Albion when they travel to Arsenal in the Barclays Women’s Super League on Sunday.
When the Hammers walk out onto the Meadow Park turf at the weekend, it will have been two weeks since their 3-1 success over the Seagulls, which was earned courtesy of goals from Shekiera Martinez, Riko Ueki and Viviane Asseyi.
That win took the Hammers up to eighth in the WSL standings and Skinner’s side, despite the international break, will head to their London rivals full of confidence.
Although the women’s team weren’t in action at the weekend, the break provided more reason for the Irons to be positive ahead of Sunday, as it saw a record 18 players represent their respective countries - which is testament to the hard work of everyone at the Club.
Striker Riko Ueki and Japan lifted the SheBelieves Cup for the first time in their history, while defender Shelina Zadorsky helped her Canada team to the Pinatar Cup trophy. Elsewhere - in the UEFA Women’s Nations League - Kinga Szemik kept back-to-back clean sheets to send Poland to the summit of the Group B1 table and Eva Nyström was on target from the spot for Finland in their 1-0 win over Hungary.
And we can’t forget about Dagný Brynjarsdóttir, who made her first appearance in an Iceland shirt since she became a mum of two, as she played 120 minutes for her country across their two Group A2 matches against Switzerland and France.
Back at Chadwell Heath, the remainder of the squad have been working tirelessly, and Skinner hailed the application of those players in her pre-match press conference, as well as discussing the job Renée Slegers has done at Arsenal and the fixture on Sunday.
Everyone has come back from international duty in good shape
We’ve not had a lot of time [to train as a whole squad], we don’t have all the players back yet from the SheBelieves Cup. Everybody that’s come back is in good shape, which is a real positive, and a lot of our players have achieved a lot of good stuff in the time that they’ve been away.
The training group that have been here have worked really hard, which has been great. And sometimes that’s challenging, when there’s only a few players here. They have worked on some bespoke stuff they wanted to get on top of and the narrative hasn’t changed in terms of what we wanted to achieve as a team.
The application of everyone here has been great, and, as I’ve said, there has been some real positive success with the national teams.
We'll do everything we can to put in a good performance against Arsenal
Two of the [international] cups have had three games in ten days and given the volume of games we had before the break, that’s something that needs reviewing for the players. The wellbeing of the players is really important.
It’s less than ideal for preparation for the game, there’s no two ways about that. When you go into the games, you expect everybody to be in the same situation, but then it comes down to squad depth and things like that. Everybody will do everything they can from our end to have a good performance on Sunday, and we’ll give everything we can for that.
We get used to these stoppages [in the season] but you want to keep the momentum and you want to keep the flow going in that headspace. It creates some challenges to the team, to flip from the international team mindset, but I’ve got a fantastic group of people here and they want to work hard and put in good performances. It’s a London derby and we want to give it everything we can.
The players' attitude against Brighton shone through
We were delighted with the [Brighton] game. We’ve had a lot of good performances but I think we put a lot of that together and made life really difficult for Brighton, and in truth the scoreline could have been 5-3. We had some great opportunities but both goalkeepers made some great saves.
It was always going to be end-to-end - probably one for the neutral than for the managers. We pressed effectively, made life difficult for Brighton, and we were good in front of goal. The determination, attitude and desire from the players shone through, and we were fantastic on the day.
Renée Slegers has done a great job at Arsenal
The game’s going to be tough, in terms of the players that they have who can unlock things. They've got good quality, they're in good form.
I think she’s [Slegers] done a fantastic job since coming in and that’s got to be acknowledged by everybody. They’re playing with freedom, creativity and they’ve been ruthless in front of goal. But on our day, in this league, you can get points from anybody, and that’s what we’ll be trying to do.
