Paul Konchesky believes West Ham United Women put in a fantastic performance against Manchester City but perhaps lacked a little belief in themselves in defeat.
The Hammers opened their 2023 schedule with a narrow 1-0 loss at home to City, with Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw netting the only goal of the game early in the second half.
The Irons went close to scoring on a number of occasions, particularly in the final ten minutes of the first-half, with Grace Fisk, Abbey-Leigh Stringer and Risa Shimizu all going close for the home side.
Speaking to West Ham TV following the match, manager Konchesky took a lot of heart from his team’s performance, and their efforts in training since returning from the Christmas break…
I thought the girls were fantastic.
The first ten minutes, we were perhaps a bit lapse, but I do think that comes down to belief. Being on the pitch with a team like Man City, I’m not sure my girls really believed until around 10-15 minutes in.
I think, once they started to, we saw the West Ham that we should see here. Other than the five minutes straight after half-time, I thought we were fantastic.
The goal-mouth scramble was mad.
It wasn’t to be but, in those ten minutes before half-time, we really put pressure on them and played well. Maybe, if we got a goal at that point, we get a different result.
Even after they took the lead, we grew back into the game, got a chance at the end, and then who knows.
We’ve been competing with the biggest teams in this league and that’s been a massive thing for us.
You get the two three or four teams in this league and they try to run away with it, but for us this year we’ve really competed with those top four teams.
That’s what I ask for from this team and we are closing that gap. We will take points off these teams and we can compete.
Coming out of the Christmas break, the team has look fantastic.
I had a feeling they would look good in this game after a good week training. The atmosphere around the place has been really good and we’re just disappointed, for the effort we’ve put in, we’ve not got something from the game.
We’re into a busy spell now.
We’ve got four or five games coming up, which is better than training, but we want to get winning games. That will give us confidence.
We will pick ourselves up and dust ourselves down and be ready for Brighton on Wednesday.
