Billy Stewart hailed West Ham United’s excellent performance in the 4-0 win over Bristol City and believes the side have a solid position to build from.
An own-goal in the first period, followed by finishes from Emily van Egmond, Rachel Daly and Martha Thomas earned the away side a deserved three points at Twerton Park for a second Barclays FA Women’s Super League win of the season.
Interim head coach Stewart was delighted with the team’s efforts and thinks supporters are seeing the players enjoying their hard work, both on the training pitches and in matches.
“I think we did really well,” Stewart said. “We built on a solid performance from last week and we continued it today against Bristol. I put that down to good players training hard, and enjoying themselves in training and working for themselves, as a squad.”
There were two changes to the starting XI from last weekend’s match at Chelsea, with Lois Joel and Ruby Grant coming into the side, and Stewart was happy with how the two youngsters conducted themselves and performed in the win over the Robins.
He continued: “We look at the young players we’ve got in the squad and it’s good to give them game time if we can. They were in the squad, and the team, for how well they’ve trained this week.
“What we’re trying to do is select the players that we think are the best players to feature against each team. It’s not that the other players didn’t anything wrong, because everyone has been fantastic.”
With his side putting away four goals, Stewart also hailed his team for keeping out a Bristol City side that were looking to find a foothold back into the game, with Mackenzie Arnold forced into action to keep out the Robins.
The interim head coach also hailed striker Thomas’ efforts, with her showing more than meriting a goalscoring finish.
“It’s great that Martha got her goal. She’s worked so hard in training and has been scoring goals in training. Like all strikers, they need to be finding the goal in training. She’s been doing that and it’s showing on the pitch.
“If you look at the other end, with Lois’ tackle and Mackenzie’s save at the end, that’s fantastic too. It’s great to keep a clean-sheet in any game. Bristol were a bit unlucky to not score a goal or two but it was fantastic from us to keep them out.”
With another big game before the end of 2020, at home to Aston Villa next weekend, Stewart is looking for his team to show another big performance as they seek to end the year with three points at Dagenham & Redbridge Stadium.
He added: “We’ll certainly be looking to do our best from a performance standpoint. It’s the performances that get you goals and win you games. We’ve had two good performances and now we want to build on those and improve even more.”
