Defeat for Spurs Women at United

Two goals in five minutes towards the end of the first half paved the way for Manchester United Women to claim victory in the Barclays FA Women's Super League on Sunday.

Having kept the Red Devils at arm's length for the first half-an-hour and seen a big chance for Jess Naz slip agonisingly away at Leigh Sports Village, we conceded to Vilde Boe Risa's close-range effort from a corner in the 37th minute before Hayley Ladd quickly made it 2-0 with a diving header.

The hosts pushed on to add a third after the break via Leah Galton and although we kept up our efforts to get off the mark with Rosella Ayane denied by Mary Earps and Rachel Williams planting a free header wide in a glorious late chance, we couldn't prevent United from registering a sixth consecutive win in all competitions.

We'd gone into the game level with both United and second-placed Chelsea but there's still everything to play for in the second half of the season despite this result, with the Blues held at Brighton a bit later on Sunday afternoon.

We arrived in the north west without Kyah Simon, So-hyun Cho and Jiali Tang, who are all away on international duty at the Asian Cup, meaning Rehanne Skinner was once again relying on the full depth of her squad.

Galton had a couple of openings down the left side for United but was denied first by a good stop from Tinja-Riikka Korpela and then again by an excellent sliding recovery tackle from Ashleigh Neville, but the game exploded into life on the half-hour mark when Williams motored down the right flank and sent in a brilliant cross, which Naz was just unable to turn home at the near post.

We'd come to regret that missed opportunity as the hosts took the lead seven minutes later. Ella Toone's angled shot following a clever short free-kick routine was deflected behind and from Katie Zelem's resulting corner, Boe Risa broke free to convert at the back post. Five minutes later, we had it all to do as, after a lucky ricochet on the right flank, Toone's cross was met with a firm header by Ladd to double her side's advantage.

It could have been 3-0 just after the break but Galton put Alessio Russo's cross over the bar from point-blank range, while Russo herself later went close. However, United made no mistake on 62 minutes as Martha Thomas crossed with her first action after coming off the bench, Neville couldn't clear her lines in the box and that left Galton with a tap-in for 3-0.

We rallied in spite of the deficit and tested Earps for the first time through Ayane on the break on 72 minutes, while Williams headed over the bar and then saw the best chance of the lot slip away 10 minutes from time as she powered a back-post header wide when unmarked from Neville's delivery. There was a WSL debut for Academy player Isabella Lane in stoppage time, but in truth the damage was done in the first half as we slipped to our first defeat since 21 November.

Reaction on Spurs TV

‘We haven’t been conceding from those types of situations’

Rehanne told Spurs TV after the game: “We started the game in a way that allowed United to get at us in the first 10 minutes a couple of times, but I thought we solved the problem fairly quickly with that, so we reduced their opportunities when we realised how to manage the rotations and we actually had a very good chance to go 1-0 up from Jess, so that’s an opportunity missed where we could have taken the lead and that puts us in a different position. I think there’s a couple of mistakes made that we’ve got to be better at when conceding the first two goals – they’re things where we haven’t been conceding from those types of situations.

“When we went in at half-time, we knew we had a struggle and we were going to need to pick everything up a little bit more but the team stayed pretty positive and the thing that’s pleasing I suppose, if you can pick things out of a 3-0 scoreline, is the chances that we created in the last 15 minutes, but we all know that we can’t be waiting until that stage of a game to have that kind of impact. Rachel Williams has had two great headed opportunities and Rosella has had a great opportunity as well, so we’ve created some good chances, on a different day we might take them and it’s a different scoreline but we are where we are this time, we’ve got to look at that and move on.”

Match data

Goals: Manchester United - Boe Risa 37, Ladd 42, Galton 62.

Yellow cards: Manchester United - Toone 28, Ladd 86.

Referee: Lucy May.

Venue: Leigh Sports Village.

Weather: Bright, six degrees.

Attendance: 1,519.