West Ham United women's team manager Rehanne Skinner says her side can take confidence from the way they have started the Barclays Women’s Super League and is relishing a tough London derby away at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.
The Hammers make the short journey to Brisbane Road and will be looking to return to winning ways after the international break. Skinner’s side have picked up two points in their first five games – with draws against Liverpool and Everton – while they also suffered defeats against Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal.
Skinner has now challenged her players to build on the opening period of the season by securing a full share of the spoils against their near-neighbours Tottenham, who themselves are without a win since their opening day of the WSL campaign against Crystal Palace.
With both meetings between the sides last year providing plenty of goals, all signs point to an enticing encounter in east London.
Here is what she had to say when facing the media in her pre-match press conference on Friday...
Everyone's come back safe and sound from international duty
It’s looking really positive. Everyone's come back from internationals safe and sound, a bit tired and jet lagged as you can imagine, for the ones that have been a bit further afield, but we've had everybody in today. Everybody's looking in good shape and in good spirits, despite a bit of jet lag. We had a positive session today, and they were lively, to be fair, so that's always good when you come in off an international break.
I think the challenge with the Nations League is that there's been play-offs, which has been quite intense for all of the players that are involved in that, because there's so much riding on it. So definitely, we've been in a really good position, actually, where, out of all of the nations that we have representation, only one of them was unfortunate enough not to qualify. So, it's been really positive, probably a bit of a reset as well.
I think sometimes when you're going away from Club and you're coming back in, I think it actually freshens things up a lot of the time for the players, and this group is really together, so when they've come back together, that's why they're so lively on the pitch, because they're back together again.
The international break has gone really well, and for the most part, most of our players haven't gone too far away. We've only had three going on long-haul flights, which is better than normal, to be honest. But I think the first day back in, when you're leading into a game at the weekend, it's just revisiting the bits that are the basics around who you are, what you're trying to do, and what we represent to kind of come back out of that mode. We've had a good training group here, and we've played a friendly in that time, so all the remaining players have had 90 minutes, so that's been great to keep everybody on track.
We’ve tightened up defensively this season, and overall, our performances have been good
The thing that has gone really well for us is that we’re limiting the opposition's chances to less than what we did in all of last season in every game. I think just collectively with how many players we had in quite late, that's been a bit of a challenge, and that's an adjustment for a lot of players coming from abroad. Also, when you've got the games that we've had, we've had a tough introduction with three trips to the North-West and four out of the top five from last year to play against, which is a real challenge, but lots of learning opportunities and overall performances.
I think our performances have been really good. We probably want to create a little bit more, if I'm honest, and we've discussed that, but you don't get loads of chances against Manchester United, Manchester City and Arsenal, while Liverpool are always difficult to break down, so when you actually look at the context around it, I think we've given a good account of ourselves in those moments. We're disappointed with the Everton result, but I think in the others we've done really well. We will continue to be resolute, hard-working, organised, and make ourselves really hard to beat, but we definitely want to increase our capabilities in attacking threat moving forward.
For us defensively, it's definitely an area that we've become much more solid with, and we've improved and progressed on last year. So that's something that we've done a lot of work on. It wasn’t an area that we weren't great on, but we've put a lot of work into that to try and improve, and so we'll make life as difficult as we can for Tottenham. Going the other way, we've been doing quite a lot of work on that as well in more detail now that we've got all the players available, and I think we’ve got the creativity and the quality to score goals.
It’s an important run of fixtures coming up, but we’re on the cusp of moving to the next level
You never know if you're going to get points out of the ones that were in the four out of the top five from last year. So, the point against Liverpool was a really important one, and I think these next couple of games in particular are important, and we want to obviously try and do a really good job in those games, focusing on Tottenham first. These games coming up are definitely opportunities for points, and we're not going to hide behind the fact that we want to get points out of them. It's important we go and do that and deliver that this weekend.
The squad's done a really good job, and there’s so many positives in terms of performances and the way that the teams move forward that we're just sort of on the cusp of moving on to the next level, really.
We're in a good place
I think the good position that we're in now is the players that we signed in the summer; everybody has adjusted and everybody's fit, and that's taken a bit of time to kind of chip away at getting everybody fully in a position to play and having the depth in the squad then, and that makes a difference. We all know you've got to start with a strong squad, but you also need to finish with a strong squad, and that's taking some time.
Based on where we are in terms of what we've been able to achieve with our budget, I think we've done a really good job. I think the players that we now have, we've got players that can move between positions as well, so we've recruited for players that have some versatility, that help us with the squad depth, and that's obviously a bonus for us. I think the challenge that we had in the first block was that not all of them were fixed. They came from lots of different settings, and so that's taken an adjustment period. So now that we are where we are in this next block of games, we’re definitely in a positive position for player availability, so that's hopefully going to keep us in a good position.
We’re all excited for Tottenham derby
I think for us, when players talk about it in here, everybody gets really excited for a London derby, and it doesn't matter which team it is. Historically, on the men's side, West Ham and Tottenham are quite close in the context of geography, so it's a big rivalry for sure. I think for us, we just want to make sure that we bring all of that passion into the fact that it is a London derby, and we do want to make sure that we're really competitive. Obviously, we're away from home, albeit not that far from home as it's on our doorstep, probably more than theirs, but I think it's important that we go into the game really prepared to put up the fight that we've shown in every game. I've got no doubt the players are 100 per cent up for the game, and I think in all instances, when we play London teams, everybody is really up for the fight.
This is a window of opportunity for us, and regardless of what's happening with them [Tottenham], I think we're in a good place, and that's the only thing that we can really control. If you look at that chunk of teams that are really close, it's always the same, and there's not a lot of difference within it. So, these games kind of help you to create a little bit of a gap between yourselves and other people. It's important that we do take points from these types of games. I think there will be goals in the game, for sure.
The standard of the WSL is improving season by season
Not to repeat whatever people have said, but it literally is like that. The game demands go up every year, and the quality that comes into the league goes up every year. So naturally, the standard goes up associated with that, and I think that makes it more and more challenging, which is why a lot of people, a lot of players, want to be in this league, is because it's so challenging every single week. So, yeah, I think every single year it goes up a notch, and I think some of that relates to the way that the game's evolving elsewhere as well. So, when you look at major tournaments and the influence that has on the style of play and the things that are expected of players.
We're getting more support in and around things like performance demands and requirements, so players are able to kind of push to another level from that perspective as well, and it's only going to make the game quicker, stronger, more physical, more tactically astute, technically gifted players that come into the league that are better. So, yeah, I think it's always a tough challenge, and I think what the points show is that ultimately, again, we've said this before, but you can take points off anyone, and that's kind of the crux of it.
I think we're not blessed with the fact that the league doesn't have that many games in it overall, based on the number of teams in it. So that's one of the sides of it that I think needs to keep kind of evolving. But I think for us, you know, we're competing as best we can at this moment in time, and we'll only get better based on the players that we have available, and that's something that is going to hopefully put us in a position where we're competitive in a really competitive league.
We’re looking to up our shot volume
I think our shot volume needs to go up, and we've had a long conversation about that. We potentially turn down some chances that we could be taking more if we were a little bit more positive thinking about some of those scenarios. I think we've created some good quality, clear-cut chances that maybe we've not converted, so it's just a case of making sure that we're continuing to practice and to make sure that we're taking those opportunities when they arise, and that's across the board - that's the whole team, really, because several of those have dropped from things like set plays and stuff like that. So, it's not just open play opportunities that we're trying to improve on; for me, it's the mindset piece around increasing shot volume, creating more opportunities from that, whether that be second phases of it, or increasing our number of attacking set players, because that number has been fairly low. But again, it’s important to remember who we’ve played against. We played against them and created more chances in that one game that we did against them in both games last season. I believe the squad is good enough to score goals from multiple people. I think it's just a case of, once we get one or two, I think that'll start to change the narrative for us.
