Head coach Matt Beard is fully confident that his West Ham United women’s team can take the points when Lewes FC Women visit Rush Green Stadium on Sunday.
The Irons will play their first home game of the 2018/19 campaign this weekend against the FA Women’s Championship side in the Continental Tyres Cup.
Despite been defeated by Arsenal 3-1 last weekend, Beard took a lot of positives from his side’s performance, and is optimistic the team can go one better and claim a result.
If we perform like we did at Arsenal, I’m confident that we will get the three points
Matt Beard
“Against Arsenal, you could really see the togetherness of the side,” Beard told whufc.com. “Even when they went and scored their third goal late on, we continued to push on and create chances. From that perspective, I was really pleased with our performance.
“We now play Lewes in our first game on our home pitch. If we perform like we did at Arsenal, I’m confident that we will get the three points. We continue to improve week by week, and it would be great to tick off this game with a win.”
It will be the second time in two weeks the Hammers have played Lewes, having visit the Dripping Pan in the final game of pre-season.
That day, second-half goals from Kate Longhurst, Vyan Sampson, Leanne Kiernan and Jane Ross secured a 5-0 result for the Irons, although Lewes proved tricky opposition, particularly in the first period.
Beard wants to see his side use what they learned from that game and put it into effect on Sunday.
He added: “Of course, we know a little bit about Lewes already. They caused us a lot of problems in the first half, when we played them in pre-season, with their block and in the second half we dealt with that really well.
“It’s good that we’ve played them and know a little bit about them, because we can be more specific with how we want to play and what we want to do.”