The Halfway Line heard from Southampton head coach Remi Allen on Sunday afternoon after the Saints suffered a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Birmingham City.
Southampton entered the fixture on a high after beating south coast rivals Portsmouth FC 5-0 the week prior, but their table-topping visitors could not be caught on the occasion.
Allen ‘disappointed and frustrated’ by Southampton performance
Southampton’s toughest fixture yet came against their manager’s former side. Allen played in the midfield of the Blues before beginning her senior coaching career last season, and told The Halfway Line how she felt heading into Sunday’s match.
“For me, it was no different. It was just, you know, prepare in the same way. There’s many clubs that I’ve played for, so they’ll [Southampton] probably face them a lot. So yeah, I didn’t think about it in from a personal perspective. It was just, prepare the team the right way, that we do week in week out, to try and beat a very good Blues side.”
However, the head coach said she was “Disappointed and frustrated” with her team’s performance on this occasion.
Providing her thoughts after the final whistle went, the manager said “First half, we competed. Second half, I don’t think we laid a glove on and it wasn’t good enough by our standard. Our standards, we can be better. We want to be harder to beat. We’ve got to get in the duals. We’ve got to fight. We’ve got to compete.”
Managing expectations this season
The Southampton boss has had a largely positive start to her first season in charge. Allen was eager to address the fact that this weekend’s result does not take away from the overall ambitions of the group, but does provide an insight into the work that needs to be done.
She said, “I think it’s really important you don’t get too high with the highs, and you don’t get too low with the lows. It’s a league, it’s competitive, so each team will beat each other at different points. So, it’s just about us refocusing and going again.”
On how she looks to ensure her players are also adopting this measured approach to results throughout the season, Allen explained “You just have to communicate that with them.”
She continued, “There are definitely areas that we know we can improve on, which we are going to work really hard to do. It’s also important to reflect that, there’s some good passages of play, there’s performances where we’ve done really well, so managing that balance and just keeping it steady to go through the league, and try and pick up the points we need.”
‘The league is wide open’ expresses Allen
Speaking on the competitive nature of the Barclays Women’s Championship, Allen said “The league is wide open, everyone’s beating everyone. We want to win as many games as possible.”
Allen admitted, “I think we can be better, we want to be harder to beat, we’ve got to get in the duels, we’ve got to fight, we’ve got to compete.”
This coming Sunday, the Saints will travel to London to face last season’s runners-up, Charlton Athletic. Following the latest round of Barclays Women’s Championship action, Southampton have dropped down to the seventh spot in the table, whilst Charlton chase Birmingham City in second.
