Paul Konchesky was pleased that his West Ham United side were able to book their place in fifth round of the Vitality Women’s FA Cup.
His side were made to work hard against third tier side Wolverhampton Wanderers at New Bucks Head in Shropshire, but they eventually went ahead on 70 minutes when substitute Dagný Brynjarsdóttir fired in from close range.
Six minutes later and it was two – Kate Longhurst delivered a dangerous ball in that Katie Johnson couldn’t steer away and instead her clearance landed in the back of her own net.
Wolves, who are joint-top of the National League North Premier Division, and only missed out on promotion to the Barclays Women’s Championship last season after losing in a playoff tie to Southampton.
They gave the Hammers a tough afternoon, battling for every ball and making life difficult by employing a low block to stop the WSL side in their tracks on many occasion.
But Konchesky was pleased to see his side persevere and find a way to win the game and make it through to the next round.
We’ve achieved our main aim today of making it through
You know it’s always going to be tough when you come up against these so called lower teams.
It’s like a cup final for them, so to come away with a clean sheet and advance into the next round is exactly what we wanted to do.
Wolves pushed us hard today
Like I said, it will feel like there cup final today because they’re taking on a professional side from the top division – they had a lot to play for.
Because we’re the favourite, it almost felt like we had nothing to gain in a sense that everyone expects us to win.
The pitch probably didn’t help things either, it’s not the sort of surface we’re used to playing on and it probably helped to even things out. But overall, it’s good to be through and credit to Wolves because I thought they did well.
We tried to give the starters today but we did need them in the end
When things are going tough out there then you need to bring them on. Obviously we’ve played a lot of matches so we’d have rather not had to do that, but Dagny came up trumps and got us that goal that we needed.
We know what she brings to this team, and she helped us on our way to another win.
I thought Halle and Keira were both fantastic in midfield
It’s great for Keira to came away with an assist too, she showed really good composure to slot the ball into Dagny.
It was quite tough for them because they’re coming into the team when they both haven’t had too many minutes of late – so for them to come in and play 90 minutes and put in the performances that they did was brilliant for the them and for the club.
We now have a little bit of time until we play Arsenal
It’s been a tough two weeks on the road, so it’ll be nice to have a little bit more time on the training pitch to prepare for a really tough game in the WSL.
It feels like we’ve been away for a long time so it’ll be nice to be back playing in front of our fans again. It’s a massive game, so it would be nice to have a large number of fans there cheering us on because we’re going to need all that support to help us try and pick up a good result.
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