West Ham United women’s team manager Rehanne Skinner has instructed her side to stay sharp and grounded ahead of their Barclays Women’s Super League match at home to Aston Villa.
Sunday’s encounter will be the Hammers’ final game of the season at Chigwell Construction Stadium - a place that has brought them so much joy this term, as they have accumulated the most points and wins in the side’s history in a single campaign in Dagenham.
They still have one more push to make before the curtain closes in east London, as they face Aston Villa, who are buoyed by three-successive victories, the most recent coming on Wednesday night at home to second-place Arsenal which saw Natalia Arroyo’s team run out 5-2 winners at Villa Park.
But the Irons are hardly short of confidence themselves, as they head into the game off the back of last weekend’s 7-1 success over Crystal Palace - their biggest-ever victory in the WSL. Four goals from Shekiera Martinez, a brilliant Viviane Asseyi lob and a late Emma Harries brace helped the Irons on their way to a monumental three points at the VBS Community Stadium, extending the women’s team’s unbeaten run to five league matches.
But Skinner is taking it game by game as we approach the end of the WSL campaign, and is aware of the threat that Sunday’s opponents will pose. As well as the fixture against the Villains, the manager, speaking in her pre-match press conference on Thursday afternoon, spoke about the togetherness of the squad and how she doesn't want to make wholesale changes to the side.
Here are the main talking points from the presser.
We want to stick to playing our way
I think the biggest thing is the amount of change that's been so positive over the last 18 months is through a lot of people's hard work, and how we've come together to make sure that we're doing things properly, and at the right pace.
This league's so difficult and the consistency is just so important. We've got to keep adding value to the squad, sticking to playing our way, playing to our strengths. I want to make sure that next year we can continue in the same way. That would be a massive success because it's so hard to do.
We want to get to the point where we're adding few players for strength and depth
One of the things we spoke about in the early stages when I came into the Club was that we were going to need to build a team, and then stick to that team. The contract renewals of Amber [Tysiak] and Anouk [Denton] were just so important to show what that's going to look like moving forward. We've still got a lot of people in contract next year, so that's a positive.
We had a lot of work to do on the recruitment because there [was] too much turnover, and that's so hard when you're essentially rebuilding every year. We did have a rebuild and it has been a process, but ultimately, we want to get to the point where we're able to add a few players to add strength and depth versus wholesale changes.
That's the bit that's really, really important, and that's what we've been working on over the course of the transfer windows. We know there's always opportunities for players when they're doing well, and so there should be. When they're doing well, that's credit to them, but ultimately we want to make sure that we keep the core group together, keep performing well, stay consistent next year and that stops us from needing longer to be able to gel the team.
The players love playing for the team
I think whenever you look at successful teams, the sense of belonging and togetherness is one of the things that makes people play well. People enjoy the environment and want to be here, and therefore be loyal and committed to that.
Whenever you see any of our players chatting post-game, they always talk about it [the togetherness] and that's something that people don't do unless they mean it.
Ultimately, if they're talking about how much they love playing for the team and for each other, that speaks volumes about where they feel they are within the team and how the culture has been created in such a positive way. It takes time to get that.
We work together on it every day, players and staff. It's something that we know works for us and everybody's been able to perform well as a result of the culture and the environment that we've worked hard on.
Everybody's got to stay sharp
Every game we take the positives, but there's things that we can work on and that's because we want to continually improve. If you sit on your heels and you think you've cracked it because you've scored seven goals, then it's probably only going to go one way when you play the next game, to be honest. Everybody's got to stay sharp. That's about being professional and being on your game and sticking to the plan.
The next game is Aston Villa, we have to focus on that. They obviously had a really good result against Arsenal. That's important for us to take that into account but also to know that there's a lot of things that we've done really, really well that have enabled us to be successful in our recent run of form.
Being at home is such a big thing for us
It's going to be a really tough game. I think both teams are obviously playing well and both teams are in good form. I think the forwards of both teams have done exceptionally well recently as well. I think there's going to be goals in the game, that's for sure.
Obviously, we want to try and manage the things that we can to make their life as difficult as possible. Being at home is such a big thing for us, so we want to keep our home form in a really good place, with it being the last one of the season.
I think the game in itself will be difficult for both teams and we're going to do everything we can to try and come out still ]on our] unbeaten [run].
