Paul Konchesky says that he wants his West Ham United Women’s side to pick up a positive result against Liverpool on Sunday evening so that they can head into the upcoming international break on a high.
The Hammers are without a win in the Barclays Women’s Super League since December, but there have been positives during that time, and certainly matches where Konchesky’s team could have come away with points.
However, chances haven’t fallen their way, which has meant that they have accumulated only one point in the division since the Christmas break – a hard fought 0-0 draw with Arsenal at Chigwell Construction Stadium.
Konchesky is hoping that his side can produce a similar performance again at home on Sunday when they welcome the Reds to east London.
The boss believes the match will certainly be a tough encounter, but he wants to see his team get back on track and head into next week's international break with confidence ahead of the end of season run in.
We’re expecting a tough encounter from Liverpool.
They are a team we know well, how they play, what they’re like. Matt Beard has been here before as well, so we know what his teams are about – we know it’s going to be tough.
It’s one of those games where both teams will be up for the fight because both aren’t mathematically safe, and there’s points up for grabs.
It’s a massively important game for us, we know that we need to start picking up results and that they haven’t been good enough in the league since Christmas.
We could have taken the pressure off of ourselves and been not only mathematically safe, but also in the top half and fighting with those above, but we are where we are now and we need to maximise the amount of points we can get in our final six games. This is an important game and a big opportunity to pick up three points.
We have to build on the positives that we showed in the first half against Manchester United.
For the first 55 minutes we competed against one of the best in the league and a team that are fighting at the very top. There were loads of positives we could take from that game, but also from the games previous as well.
When we played at Reading and when we played at home against Villa, there were also a lot of positives, we just couldn’t get the result. We probably should have come away with wins, or at least some points in all of those games, but we haven’t been able to and that’s why we’ve not been able to push forward.
There are obviously areas to improve on, and we feel we’ve worked on that this week in training, whilst also building on what we know we’ve done well in spells during the last three league fixtures.
I always think that the games just before the international break add that extra challenge.
You always want a positive result, and ideally a positive performance as well so that players can go away and enjoy the international break. Otherwise the result lingers around for a long time because you have a long period without a game.
Our big aim is to make sure we come away with a positive result, we need to get points on the table and go into the international break on a high, rather than looking over our shoulder.
It’s great to see Amber Tysiak back out on the grass.
She’s been doing really well after suffering a setback and we’re hopeful of having her back really soon. Abby-Leigh Stringer is going to be touch and go for the game, we have another training session on Saturday to come where she will be assessed – but we hope that she can be part of the squad.
It’s always nice to have decisions to be made, and we have to pick the right team for the right occasion, and that will be no different on Sunday.
There’s a balance to having so many players being called up for international duty.
It’s fantastic for the Club to consistently have ten or eleven players away on international duty at any one time, and that’s even without some of the younger players joining up with the U18s and U23s.
It shows that we have some very good players here at West Ham, and we always enjoy watching them whilst they’re away and we know that they will gain lots from those experiences.
From a club point of view, it leaves us with only a handful of players here that don’t go away, which can be difficult because it limits what you can work on – plus with having such a long break until our next game – it makes Sunday’s fixture even more important.
Tickets are available for the match against Liverpool on Sunday and are priced from as little as £13 for Adults and £5 for Juniors.
Tickets can be purchased online until 3pm on the day of the match, or from the ticket office at Chigwell Construction Stadium, which opens at 3:30pm on Sunday.
