As West Ham United Women bowed out of the Vitality Women’s FA Cup with a 4-1 defeat to Manchester City at the semi-final stage, manager Olli Harder was left to reflect on what could have been for his team.
Goals from Ellen White and Chloe Kelly put the away side in the ascendancy, but Lisa Evans hit back just before the break.
Chances fell to Tameka Yallop and Evans to score a leveller, but it would be a double from Lauren Hemp that would seal the win in the sunshine at the Chigwell Construction Stadium.
In truth, the scoreline seemed to flatter Manchester City. The Hammers had some great moments throughout the game, but the quality of City shone through on Saturday afternoon – and they will now look to compete for their fourth FA Cup trophy.
Harder was pleased with aspects of his team’s performance at the full-time whistle.
Overall, I thought the effort and application was there from the team.
We lacked a little bit of quality in certain moments, but overall, we gave it a really good crack out there today. I don’t think that the score line reflects the game as a whole – but congratulations to Manchester City for reaching the final.
We had some really good moments in the game and I thought there were also periods that we controlled well. We know that City are going to have the majority of the ball, that’s no secret. So, for us it was about trying to control the space and certain moments when they arrived.
I thought we did that relatively well, but we lacked a bit of concentration in certain moments today, and that in the end is what cost us.
We showed resilience to get back into the game.
We’ve seen that from the team before, this has been a feature of our side this season and it’s something that, as a squad and a coaching staff, we’ve talked about a lot.
When you play for West Ham United, its about having that resilience, it’s all about having that passion – you’re playing for a tremendous football Club.
As I said, it’s not the first time we’ve seen that quality, and it’s really fantastic that we saw it again today.
I think it’s always tough for both teams when you come into a game off the back of an international break.
It didn’t give us the time that we would have wanted with the squad to prepare for this game, as both teams only got their full squad’s back yesterday.
So, from that aspect I think it’s always going to be tough to find consistency and prepare properly for such a big match.
I’m just so proud of the girls and their effort.
They left it all out on the pitch today and that’s all I can ask for as a manager. It was the type of game where if moments had have gone differently, then we might be sitting here talking about going to Wembley, but unfortunately that’s not the case.
The last 18 months has shown great progression.
When I arrived at West Ham, we were in a relegation battle and the club looked as though it was going to go down. We’ve reached the Conti Cup quarter-final, the FA Cup semi-final and achieved the most points of any West Ham team [in the WSL] with three games remaining.
So there are lots of positives to take from this season - now we need to push on and make sure that this game doesn’t define us and finish the season in a positive way.
It was really nice to get the support behind us from our fans.
Hopefully we’ve inspired a few of the younger generation to pick up the sport or to continue in the sport so that we can get some future West Ham players coming through our ranks.
