Matt Beard has hailed his West Ham United’s team has giving their ‘best performance all season’ in Sunday’s 5-0 victory away to Yeovil Town Ladies.
Braces for Alisha Lehmann and Julia Simic, as well as a Brianna Visalli header, saw the Irons earn their best result since joining the FA Women’s Super League, ending their 2018 league fixtures with the dominant victory.
The result secures three wins on the bounce for the Hammers, all of which have come with clean-sheets, but this victory was the best of the campaign so far, according to the boss.
“That was probably our best performance all season,” Beard said. “When you’re comfortable in the game sometimes it can be easy to switch off, and I don’t think we did that. We completely restricted their strengths and we took full advantage. It was a pleasing performance.
“It’s a mark of where we are that we kept going. Yeovil are quite direct and we stopped them from doing that. From my perspective, the performance from start to finish was unrelenting. We kept going and we kept doing the right things. We could have had more goals. It was really pleasing.”
That was probably our best performance all season
Matt Beard
The result was a complete team performance, according to Beard, with the manager delighted with the efforts from each of his players.
In particular, the returning Ria Percival, who registered two assists, and Simic, who got two goals and an assist, stood out for Beard.
He continued: “We’ve worked on finishing from crosses and playing down the sides. We knew we could exploit that and because they were high with their shape, we knew we could be high.
“Ria Percival’s deliveries were world-class today. She was top drawer and, nine times out of ten, it is the cross that makes the delivery.
“I think everyone in our team was excellent today. Julia Simic was world-class today and Ria was great. Our positional play was fantastic with and without the ball.”