Defender Amber Tysiak wants West Ham United women’s team to use our performance against Manchester City as a positive boost to go all out for three points against Leicester City on Sunday.
The Hammers welcome the Foxes to Chigwell Construction Stadium at the weekend for our first home Barclays Women’s Super League fixture in over a month, and Rehanne Skinner’s side will be striving to collect our first league win of the campaign.
After losing narrowly against the second-place Citizens last time out, the Irons head into the clash in east London buoyed by the chances we created in Manchester, particularly in the first half, as Viviane Asseyi, Riko Ueki and Shekiera Martinez all went close to earning us something from the game.
While it was not to be up north, our No5 saw plenty of positives from last weekend’s match and reasons to be optimistic heading into the game against Leicester - the first of three successive fixtures in Dagenham for the women's team.
“Coming back from the international break is always a busy period,” said Tysiak. “I think the way we came back in the training sessions before [the game against Manchester City], we were really focused. We were really ready for that game.
“It was a really good performance and it was a performance to build on. I think we deserved a little bit more and we went close in the first half. It gives us a positive boost for this weekend.
“We showed a really mature response [from the international break] to go into that game and just go for it. Not saying, ‘I’m tired’. Everyone put in a shift and it was unfortunate we didn’t take any points out of the game.
“There’s a feeling in the group that we’ve reset now after being with our national teams. The performance we had was good to start this month, [and now we need to] just go for it. If we can play well against City, we have no excuse to not do it against teams who are in and around us in the table.”
Facing Leicester presents Tysiak with the opportunity to see some familiar faces. The 25-year-old will be reunited with Belgium internationals Sari Kees and Janice Cayman, as well as former Hammers assistant manager Rick Passmoor, who was appointed Foxes manager on a permanent basis in October.
“It will be nice to see them (Kees and Cayman) again, although I was just spending time with them while we were away with Belgium!” said Tysiak, whose former side, Oud-Heverlee Leuven, are one of Leicester City's sister clubs.
“It’s good for Belgium to have players in this league and to face them will be a nice game, but very competitive too! I know it will be a tough game because all three of us want to win.
“He (Passmoor) knows us very well and we know him very well. It’s also great to see him doing well, but I just hope not on Sunday! I’m happy he’s finding his feet and doing well there. I was very close to Rick because he was our defensive coach, so I had a lot of chats with him.”
On a similar theme, during the international break, Tysiak’s Belgium faced the Republic of Ireland in a UEFA Women’s Nations League promotion/relegation play-off, meaning she faced off against fellow Hammers Jess Ziu and Jessie Stapleton.
While her side didn’t get the result they wanted, Tysiak was still pleased to see the Republic of Ireland duo.
She said: “It was really nice to see both of them, especially Jess [Ziu] because I lived with her and I’ve been close with her for a long time. I still message her every so often, but it was nice to see a familiar face.
“I’m happy to see her progressing well with her recovery from her injury, and Jessie [Stapleton] is one of Ireland’s important players. It was nice to see all my teammates doing well at international level.”
