West Ham United manager, Rehanne Skinner, spoke to the media on Thursday afternoon, as the Irons boss previews her side’s upcoming outing in the Barclays Women’s Super League.

The Irons are set to face off with an unforgiving Chelsea outfit, as Emma Hayes’s Blues return off the back of a dominant European display against Ajax on Wednesday evening. Skinner reflected on how her side look to manage the ever-rotating dominance of the Blues squad list, affirming that her side’s focus will still remain intrinsic.

“In terms of the strategy that they employ, the principles in which Emma [Hayes] plays, stay the same. So you just have to obviously manage a couple of personnel who are slightly different in what they do.

This is the third time that we’ve played them this season as well, so we’ve had opportunities to see what that looks like, and to obviously experience different players playing against us in their squad. I think we have to prepare, focus in on us primarily, which is the same thing every weekend.”

Next providing an update on the fitness of her side set to face the Blues, Skinner confirmed that “Kristie Mewis won’t be available this weekend. When she came to us, she’d recovered well from a tendon issue but has had a bit of a setback.”

As the Irons return to Chigwell Construction Stadium this weekend, Skinner reflected on how playing in front of a home crowd positively impacted her side’s performances against both Arsenal and Manchester United, expressing how she hopes to bring that same momentum toward Chelsea on Sunday.

“I think obviously in those couple of games we’ve shown that we can turn up, and we performed really well at home in those games. We’re looking forward to getting back in front of our fans this weekend.

They [West Ham] love these games. I think we’ve risen to the challenge of making it a really tough game whenever we’ve played teams in the top four. So I think that’s something that we definitely want to try and continue.”

Republic of Ireland forward, Jess Ziu, has found herself on a firm run back from injury over recent weeks, as the 21 year-old recently picked up Player of the Match in her nation’s recent clash with Wales. The international fixture also saw Ziu clock her first full-ninety in 16 months, something that the forward is still yet to achieve at club level.

Reflecting on how she has found Ziu to be performing in the Barclays Women’s Super League, Skinner packed on the praise for the ‘fantastic talent’ that is the young forward.

She continued, “Obviously we’ve been really patient with the turnaround coming back from the injury, and the period of time that she was out. Before Christmas, she was starting to come back to the squad a little bit more, and getting a little bit of time, and then over Christmas she worked a little bit harder and then obviously came back in and was closer to being in a position, mentally, as well as physically, to be really competitive.

I think she’s going to go from strength to strength, she’s a young player with a lot of different attributes. At the moment, we are sort of scratching the surface a little bit at the minute. The more confidence she gains within what we are trying to do and the way that she can play- the better she’ll become.“

West Ham United will host Chelsea at Chigwell Construction Stadium this coming Sunday, with play heading underway at 16:30GMT .