‘We want the same fluidity’ – Ho previews Palace tie

Sunday’s 2-1 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion made it three consecutive victories in all competitions.

And with an opportunity to continue our impressive start to the newly-reformatted Players Cup, Head Coach Martin is eyeing another positive performance at Brisbane Road.

“It’s a competition we want to make sure we push in and are competitive in,” he said.

“It’s something we have aspirations in and ambitions for, and we’ll make sure we’re prepared for the game, go into it really strongly and hopefully keep building this energy and momentum going forward.

“We just want the same fluidity that we had in the second half (on Sunday), the same fight, the same determination, the same passion – if we show more of that from a full performance perspective, I think we can put ourselves in a good position.

“I thought for 80 minutes with the ball we were good, we managed the last seven minutes very well as a team, we showed smartness, intelligence and a real steel about us to manage the game and hopefully we’ve got some of those same characteristics going into the Crystal Palace game.”

It’s our first meeting with the Eagles since our astonishing 7-0 win against them at Selhurst Park in the Barclays Women’s Super League in September, when we capitalised on the early dismissal of Fuka Tsunoda to score seven unanswered goals in the second half.

“Obviously we were playing against 10 which was a little bit different,” Martin recalled. “Then we had momentum and the goalscoring was free-flowing.”

Follow our Match Centre for live updates from tonight’s game, or watch live on the official WSL YouTube channel.