West Ham United manager Rehanne Skinner said her side are determined to ‘finish the season strongly’ ahead of tomorrow’s clash with Manchester United.
The head coach confirmed that everyone is available for this weekend’s Women’s Super League fixture, the Hammers having escaped the April international break unscathed. Regarding the window deemed ill-placed by many, Skinner asserted, “From our side of things, all I can say is, the three weeks [without a game] we’re used to managing that, but where we want to get to is that we have longer Cup runs that make sure that we’re having more games in the calendar ourselves. That’s our responsibility to make that happen moving forward.”
Their last time out, Skinner’s side took a point from table-topping Chelsea at Kingsmeadow. “Our last our last seven games have given us a lot of confidence,” Skinner said.
“March could have been really, really difficult for us when we first looked at the fixture list, but actually, all that’s happened is the players have seen it as an opportunity to get results, to get points, to show what we’re capable of, and that’s the bit that’s really given us confidence, because actually, we’ve performed in every single game.”
Manchester United are ‘a force to be reckoned with’
Providing her assessment of Manchester United, Skinner praised the recent form of Marc Skinner’s side.
“What’s interesting is, I actually think they’ve been talked about very little in this whole season, given everything that they’ve done throughout the course of the year, they are a force to be reckoned with and I think the points on the board show that, to be honest as well.
“They’re a tough team, we’re expecting a really hard game,” admitted the Hammers boss. “We had a positive game against Chelsea, we’ve got to go and do it again, and then that’s going to be really important for us in front of our home fans. It’ll be a tough test, for sure.”
Headstrong Irons ‘focus on what they can control’
With just four games remaining of this WSL season, Skinner has her sights set on success. “We want to finish the season strongly, we need to be consistent with this,” the manager urged. “I think it’s something that it’s taken us time and growth and a process to get to, and we need to be able to show that we can be competitive consistently through to the end of the season.
“Then, when you look at the season overall, I’ll be really pleased with the performances in general, because even before Christmas, I thought we were playing well, we just couldn’t quite get over the line (…) but we’ve stuck at it, and I think that showed a lot of character in the players.”
The head coach added, “We need to make sure that we take every single game seriously. We want to get as many points on the board as we can, and that’s the professionalism piece and staying focused on your job right the way through to the end of the season, and that’ll tell me even more about the players if we can stick to that.”
The manager expressed that both she and her squad are laser-focused on getting results, rather than reading or listening to what external sources think of their campaign.
“People will have an opinion, whether it’s good, bad or indifferent,” shrugged Skinner confidently. “I think that our job is to be able to be in the best head space, to perform at the best level we can every single weekend. And so we focus on training, we focus on what we can control and what we can do and that’s really the main thing that that elevates our results and performances.”
