Paul Konchesky is hoping that West Ham United Women can stick to their gameplan and come away with three points from their Barclays Women’s Super League encounter with Aston Villa.
The Irons head north for the first time this season on Saturday, making the trip to Bescot Stadium in Walsall looking to repeat their opening-day win over Everton.
The game comes on the back of an international break which saw Konchesky's players head off all over the world to represent their countries in FIFA Women's World Cup qualifying play--offs and friendly matches.
The boss believes that the Villans, who currently occupy third position in the table with two wins from two, will provide a tough test for his team, but he believes that they have enough to take points from the encounter in the West Midlands.
We’ve had a good international break with those that stayed behind.
We had a very small group with us at Chadwell [Heath] that worked with us on more individual bits and pieces, which was nice.
It shows the progression that we’re making as a Club when we have some many players away on international duty, it’s a really good thing for the Club to have players representing us on the international stage.
Playing right after the international matches is tough
We’ve had girls playing in World Cup qualifiers in which results haven’t gone the way they would have wanted, so they’ve still been trying to get their head around that and we’re asking them to focus on the weekend.
It’s a tough scenario for them, but everyone in our squad has been professional and has come back in and worked hard.
We’ve obviously lost a training day that we would usually have with the game being on a Saturday, but Aston Villa are in exactly the same boat and we can’t use it as an excuse.
Villa have had a great start to the new season
They’ve bought in a lot of players that some of our girls and myself are familiar with having been with us previously, they’ve added a lot of quality.
I think Carla Ward is a very good coach, her teams have always been difficult to play against and I’m expecting the same again on Saturday.
We want to come back with some points.
We have four or five matches until the next international break, with the majority of those matches against teams that we expect to be in and around us come the end of the season, so we need to make sure we pick up points.
I think the first ten or 15 minutes of the game will be a little bit erratic having only had two days of training as a full group. I’m expecting the game to settle down after that.
If we stick to our gameplan then we have a really good chance of returning with points, and that’s what we will be aiming for.
We will miss Lucy Parker and Jess Ziu [due to injury], but we have others who can step in.
We're obviously really disappointed to lose them both, they're big players for us. However, we have a really good squad with players that are ready to step in.
We have Emma Snerle who is slowly working her way back from injury, which I think is going to feel like new signing when she's raring to go.
West Ham United Women face Aston Villa on Saturday 15 October, with the match at Bescot Stadium getting underway at 12:30pm BST.
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