West Ham United Women’s Manager Paul Konchesky was left frustrated by the goals that his side conceded in their 6-2 defeat to Manchester City on Sunday evening.
The Hammers faced off against City at the Academy Stadium, live on Sky Sports and were hoping to upset Gareth Taylor’s team, who began the day in fourth position in the Barclays Women’s Super League standings.
But it would prove to be a difficult evening for the east Londoners, with Chloe Kelly pouncing on a defensive error after only 7 minutes - cleverly curling the ball into the bottom left corner. A minute later and Kelly had her second, with Khadija Shaw finding the flying forward who made no mistake from close range.
Emma Snerle provided an immediate response for the Irons, but Laura Coombs restored City’s two goal lead midway through the first half.
Second half goals from Khadija Shaw and Steph Houghton were followed by an effort from Lisa Evans, which Kheira Keating couldn't keep out, before Mary Fowler scored a sixth for the hosts.
It was a disappointing evening for the Hammers, and the boss reflected on the frustrating errors that contributed to the defeat at fulltime.
We gave away two really sloppy goals in the opening ten minutes.
When you come to a place like this and give away two goals so early on, it’s always going to give you a mountain to climb to get back into the game, and that’s exactly what happened today.
I think we created some good chances and had some good spells in the first half, but starting the match in the manner that we did was always going to make it really tough for us to get anything from the game.
Emma’s goal gave us some hope, but City were instinctive and clinical.
I’m really pleased for Emma to score, and it gave us a route to get back into the game and something to try and build on. Like I said, we had good spells, but we weren’t able to add another goal until the second half, which was frustrating.
The girls did rally together, and they didn’t give up, which I must give them credit for, but we’re incredibly disappointed with the scoreline and there’s certainly plenty to work on before our next fixture.
There’s still plenty to play for as we head into the final four games.
We need to get some points on the board before the season concludes. We were excellent up until Christmas and put ourselves in a really good position, but we haven’t got the results since the turn of the year, and that needs to change.
We have to look at what went wrong tonight and rectify it ahead of our next match, which is a big game against Brighton.
We don’t want to be looking over our shoulders as we head into the final few games – there’s 12 still to play for and we want to come away with as many as we possibly can and finish the season on a high.
