Dagný Brynjarsdóttir says that West Ham United Women are looking forward to taking on Reading in their first Barclays Women’s Super League in almost a month.
The Irons take on Reading at Select Car Leasing Stadium on Sunday 5 March, looking for their first WSL win of the calendar year and the Skipper is hoping that her team increase their points tally of 16 when they travel to Berkshire.
The month of February saw Paul Konchesky’s team firstly fight valiantly against Arsenal to hold the Gunners to a 0-0 draw, before defeats to Chelsea and Aston Villa in both the Continental Tyres League Cup and Vitality Women’s FA Cup respectively.
The Hammers have a good record against the Royals in the league, winning four of the last five matches – including a 3-2 victory at Chigwell Construction Stadium in October 2022.
And Brynjarsdóttir hopes that the team’s good record could spur them to another victory on Sunday.
It feels like a long time since we’ve played a game in the WSL.
It’s been a whole month! We’re just excited to be back and it’s been a while since we collected three points, so that is our aim for the weekend.
It was our goal before the season to get more points than last year and we still have 12 points to collect and getting three points against Reading is one step closer towards that goal and I think we have a big chance to win the game, but we still have to play well and have the right game plan.
It’s always a good match when we play away at Reading.
They have a great stadium, a great pitch and I actually really enjoying going there to play against them. I think the pitch is a bit bigger than other pitches and that suits us well.
I think we’re just looking forward to it, but obviously Reading are fighting for every point at the bottom, so we know it’s going to be a tough battle and we need to bring our ‘A game’ if we want the three points.
Reading have a big threat up top, I would say that’s probably the biggest threat, but we also have to be ready for a bit of a surprise.
Reading are usually quite a tough team to face.
We played them at home earlier in the season when were 3-0 up and the game ended 3-2 and they almost scored in the end where they could have taken 1 point home.
We also have to be ready if we get ahead, it doesn't matter if we have 1 or 2 goals, they’re always going to fight, always going to have a comeback and we just need to make sure we are calm, we have to stay on the front foot and keep playing well.
We can’t just drop out of it and let them get into the game, because that’s what happened when we played them at home last time.
We want to bounce back after the defeats that we’ve had in the cup competitions.
I think we struggled a bit against Aston Villa in the FA Cup because of having so many internationals gone. If I speak for myself and probably some of the other international players, we felt our legs a bit in that game, just from the travelling, from playing 3 matches in 10 days.
Obviously, you never want to lose, especially it being painful in penalties but we’re ready for the win and we want to get back to that way because it’s been a while.
