Following the high of this week’s UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final success against Chelsea, Renée Slegers is reiterating the importance of ending this period of matches on a high.
Sunday provides the opportunity to book our place in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup semi-finals when we take on Brighton & Hove Albion at Mangata Developments Stadium in Borehamwood.
We are the most successful club in the Women’s FA Cup, but haven’t won it for a decade, so our head coach is keen to make sure that changes this season.
“We know we’ve done some big things so far this block, which we’re very proud of,” she said in Friday’s pre-match press conference. “I think I said it post-match after the Chelsea game that this was probably the biggest challenge so far in the season from a scenario perspective, but we did it, now we go and prepare for Brighton off the back of all this.
“That is, for us, the big challenge of the block, that we have to finish the job and keep on going and never stop, so doing everything to recover mentally and physically from the Chelsea game and being ready for Sunday.”
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Every word of Renée’s pre-Brighton presser
A couple of our players have spent time playing in the blue and white of Brighton in recent seasons, with Rosa Kafaji and Michelle Agyemang both going on loan there, so what is it we admire about the south coast side?
“They possess the ball really well, I think they try to do that, they’re brave in their game, they work with rotations, so I think they look to dominate games with the ball, which is important, I think, for our players as well,” Renée explained. “It’s important in our game, they have a high-pressing system where they also want to be front-footed and brave, similar to us.
“So I think it’s been great, if you look at Rosa, how she’s been performing and how she’s been developing, it’s been a great environment for her.
“They always do something different, so we know how they play. Like I just said, they want to possess the ball, they want to rotate, want to create overloads, they want to press high. But we’ve also seen that they have specific game plans for specific games, so we’re also expecting something that we might not know about.
“But, yeah, they like to spend time on the ball and they’re very front-footed, very quick in their counter-press as well.”
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