Their Barclays Women’s Super League campaign began with a defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on home soil and the Foxes are back at King Power Stadium this weekend for a Midlands derby against the Villans.
Ahead of the match-up, Leicester’s manager sat down for her pre-match press conference with the media at Belvoir Drive on Thursday afternoon, speaking about a range of topics…
Setting up against Villa
“I think the beauty of the WSL is that if you look at games over the last weekend, you probably can’t predict anything. It’s important to us that we take something from every game, which is why we were disappointed not to take a point last weekend. There’s a lot of learning the players can take from that, so hopefully that helps us going into the next one.
“Going into this weekend’s game, similar to our setup in the last one, we have a plan to take three points and as a minimum we want to take one. We had that same plan against Spurs. Every game you’ve got to take the opposition in a different way. Our gameplan might not to be exactly the same, but winning any game is key if you want to stay in the league.
“You pick your personnel based on who you are up against and the type of battles you are likely to face. One thing you can always control is how hard you work, how much you press and how resilient you are in those one vs. one battles.
“We’ve shown in the previous game that we can get our defensive shape right and, second half in particular, we played with some real energy and pressured Spurs, so hopefully it will be a really good contest. It’s really important that players work for each other to make their lives as difficult as possible. If we do that, we give ourselves a really good chance of then winning the ball back and punishing them in key areas.”
Praise for the visitors
“One of the things Villa have done is recruit a handful of players that have dangerous attributes in front of goal. Rachel Daly scored two of their goals last week and she’s a natural goalscorer. The goal she scores from the set piece is audacious on the half turn and to finish one touch in the front post area shows the level that she is capable of playing at.
“Then you take a Kenza Dali’s long strike, and she was doing that for Everton last year. I’m not overly surprised that some of their players are capable of that. You’ve seen them do it previously. Across the pitch, they’ve got some quality players that started the game at the weekend.
“They’ve taken Kirsty Hanson on loan from [Manchester] United and she debuted for them, so I think all across that front line and the four players who were involved in their build-up in those areas, are all players that, given time, can create a moment of magic. Everything fell into place for Villa on that day and they took their opportunities.
“It was also a resilient performance as well. It would have been easy for them to start to fall away from what they were doing well once Man City got them back in the game, so I think that’s a credit to them as a group. I’m sure that’s something you’ll see Villa do this season and I imagine they will try to press with similar intent this weekend.”
Home support
“The atmosphere at King Power Stadium on Sunday was on another level. The noise which the fans made in the stadium, particularly in the final 15-20 minutes, when we were pushing for the equaliser, it was so much louder than last season.
“That’s just people’s voices and energy behind the team. I’ve spoken to some people who were at the game, and they commented on the impact of the fans on the players. We’ve got to take that and use that going forward and hope we have the same this weekend.
“It’s really important and we’ve got a great opportunity to do that again on Sunday. Then we have a couple of weeks where we’re away with the Conti Cup and league and then back home in October. It’s something that we can really build on. For me, it’s a bonus to us that we play at King Power Stadium because of the level of support that we get.”
The debutants
“They settled in fantastically. It wasn’t a real surprise for us that they did so. We’ve had seven pre-season games and we’ve rotated throughout that. All four of those players are on their eighth game for the Club, and I'm really pleased with the impact that they’ve had.
“People watching the team this year can immediately see the difference in terms of the level of the players and the levels they are operating at, and those four have really contributed to that over pre-season.”
Aims for the season
“We’ve spoken about the Club’s aspirations, and we don’t want to be seen as a team that is just in it for survival, which is why every game is important to us and that we take something from it.
“We’ve certainly prepared the players in pre-season with clear targets to be a team that really starts to push towards the middle of the table this season. Every team in the league now has better infrastructure, facilities and players than perhaps before.
“You’ve got to go into every game with a clear gameplan and an expectation that there will be some where you definitely think you’ve got a better chance of taking points, but in all of them, you have the mindset of setting up in a certain way to help us get something out of the game.”