Rehanne: “We’ve moved the squad in a better direction”

Squad rotation was the order of the day on Sunday, as our 5-1 win against Coventry United in the FA Women’s Continental League Cup allowed Head Coach Rehang Skinner to make four changes to the starting 11 from the previous league game.

“I’m delighted with the players and obviously the rotation we’ve had in the squad,” she said post-match. “All of that’s enabled us to get a really good result. There were some great goals today, including a goal for Lenna Gunning-Williams on her official debut, so some really good positives from the game that we want to take forward.”

As well as Gunning-Williams, Ella Houghton also came on for her first-team debut, while Kayleigh Stead was on the bench for the first time.

“They’ve been training with us, the younger players, in our Academy, so in terms of the speed of play, they’re getting up to that with the first team and it’s great to see them do so well in this game,” Rehanne said. “It’s a great game to get them into for us as well. It’s enabled us to manage a couple of players and given them great experience. 

“We’ve got Kez (Harrop) back on the pitch today and that’s huge for us, plus more minutes for Ros (Ayane) after her foot being broken, so all of those things have helped us to move the squad in a better direction for upcoming games.

“We’re not quite at the stage where everyone’s available for 90, but we’re getting much closer with the whole squad. There have been challenges in terms of availability for players, but obviously the squad’s done its absolute best in those games and I think when we’ve got everyone available we can do even more in those situations. It will be nice when we’ve got consistency with that, then we’ll start to be able to push on a bit more I think.”

Against Chelsea in our previous Women’s Super League match, we showed some tidy passages of play but failed to show the ruthlessness that we displayed against Coventry on Sunday.

“We scored some great goals today. It’s a different setup because we were playing against a low block, so the way that you can break that down is very different. I thought our attacking set-plays were very good and we scored from crosses. Once we moved the ball and manipulated it in the way that we needed to and recognised how to do that, we got a few goals from those types of opportunities, so that was really positive overall.

“The biggest thing out of today, obviously wins are really important so it helps build confidence and momentum, but the biggest thing was getting the squad in the best possible place and carrying on in this Conti Cup group to try to have a good cup run. It’s helped us to keep chipping away at the group so I think, going forward to next week, we want to be focused back on the league. It’s a huge thing for us and we want to make sure we do things really well week in, week out, so it’s put us in a much better place in preparation for that.”