West Ham United return to Barclays Women’s Super League action this weekend as the Irons travel to Walton Hall Park to face Everton on Sunday. West Ham manager Rehanne Skinner spoke to the media ahead as her side gear up for another trip up North.
First providing an update on the fitness of her side to face the Toffees, Skinner confirmed that “Kristie Mewis won’t be in the squad, [but] Kirsty Smith is back in the squad.”
Skinner says West Ham ‘have been improving’
Despite having only registered just the one point on the league table thus far, West Ham managed to fight for a 1-1 draw against last season’s fourth-place holders in Liverpool, before putting on a spirited display against Manchester City last weekend.
Speaking on how she believes her side have showed progress since the turn of the new season, Skinner expressed “I think game on game, we’ve been improving.”
Skinner reflected further “I thought there were big chunks of the game against City where we played really well. It’s coming together and more players are becoming 90-minute-ready. We are strengthening the squad and the depth so that when we make changes we are getting the energy levels at the right times.”
Everton ‘a tough team’ admits Skinner
Now turning their attention towards a meeting with Brian Sørensen’s Everton side, Skinner stressed the importance of drawing a result out of the fixture when stating “Obviously this game is an important one for us, we all know that, and we just want to make sure that we get that right and obviously come out of it with points.”
Skinner said that she believes West Ham’s meeting with the Toffees will “make for a really good game all round” before adding “it will be competitive, they’re a tough and hardworking team, similar to us. It’s going to be a challenge for both parts.”
She continued, “We need to make sure that we are focussing on the consistency of what we are trying to do, and ultimately hope that leads to increased goalscoring opportunities. I think that they will be a really tough test. We need to make sure that we are at the races from the first whistle.”
West Ham will travel to Walton Hall Park this Sunday to face Everton in the Barclays Women’s Super League. Proceedings will head underway at 14:00 BST and can be streamed live on YouTube.
