West Ham United Women manager Paul Konchesky was left bemoaning missed goalscoring opportunities and defensive errors in his side’s 2-1 home defeat to Aston Villa Women.
Rachel Daly’s finish, from a misplaced pass in the West Ham back-line, was followed up by Jordan Nobbs’ low strike to put Villa 2-0 up in Sunday’s Barclays Women’s Super League match at Chigwell Construction Stadium.
Viviane Asseyi had gone close to opening the scoring for the Irons, only to strike the post, while Amalie Thestrup saw a finish blocked from close range.
Asseyi would eventually half the deficit, heading in from Dagný Brynjarsdóttir’s cross minutes after seeing another header ruled out for offside, but it was not enough for the hosts to turn the tide and take a share of the points.
Speaking to West Ham TV after the game, manager Konchesky felt his side did not capitalise on their dominance in the first-half and were made to pay for mistakes in the second…
It’s a tough one to take.
The first half, in spells, I thought we were fantastic. Maybe we should have gone in a goal up. I know Villa scored but I think we could have had two goals before half-time, and it’s just not falling for us at the minute and then we’re getting punished up the other end.
It’s a tough one to take, this loss. They’re a good team but I think we matched them player-for-player.
Credit to Hannah Hampton. She made a fantastic save to deny Viviane Asseyi.
I think we should be scoring though. We need to be scoring these goals when we get the opportunities. We’re not scoring them and then we’re getting punished at the other end.
I think the two goals we conceded were both mistakes.
They’re mistakes that are costing us and then, it’s a knock-on effect. We are getting punished and we need to change that around sharpish.
It's good for Viviane to keep scoring.
But, at the same time, we need someone else other than Viviane finding the net if we’re going to win the game. It’s good for her belief and her confidence will be up for scoring, but we need to score goals and pick up some points as a team.
We need to get back to basics.
If we don’t keep the clean-sheet, we need to be at least hard to beat. We need to stop mistakes that are then getting punished. Our own mistakes are costing us.
At the start of the season, we were either not making them or we weren’t getting punished for them. I think we do need to get back to basics as a team that are hard to beat.
We’ve got a little break now.
We’ll be working though. We’ll be working hard on the training pitches because we need to put things right. That starts on the training ground immediately because our next game, against Manchester United, will be another tough one.
