Martha eager for home debut | Matchday programme exclusive
Martha Thomas heads into this weekend’s clash with Bristol City hoping to continue her bright start to the new season.
The Scotland international, who joined us on transfer deadline day from Manchester United, made a goalscoring debut last weekend as we opened our Women’s Super League campaign with a spirited 2-1 defeat to reigning champions Chelsea.
Under new Head Coach Robert Vilahamn, our performance at Stamford Bridge ensured the Blues faced the most shots against them in any WSL game since 2013 as we had 15 efforts on their goal, 11 on target.
Unfortunately we couldn’t turn that into points, but Martha believes the style of football we are now trying to play will lead to similar strong performances and, in turn, points on the board. And she hopes that starts on Sunday, when we host Bristol City at Brisbane Road in our home opener.
Speaking in the matchday programme for the visit of the Robins, the 27-year-old said: “Robert has an idea that he wants us to play a certain way and it’s nice to know that we’ve all bought into that and you could see that come to fruition against Chelsea.
“We wanted to press them, we wanted to keep the ball, we wanted to go at them and put them under pressure. I’ve played Chelsea quite a few times in my career and that is by far the best performance I’ve been a part of against them and I think that shows in the stats.
“It’s disappointing we didn’t put more chances away and when you’re disappointed about not getting a result against that team it shows what expectations we have for ourselves and what we can expect in our performances.
“I’m really looking forward to playing at home for the first time, it will be an exciting game and I’m hoping we can get a lot of fans there. It will be the first time I’ve visited because last year I played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, so I’m excited and I think we’ll put in another good performance to really show what we’re going to be about.”
Sunday’s matchday programme against Bristol City will be on sale at the game.
We are pleased to announce that this season’s women’s first team programmes will also be available to buy online – order Sunday’s edition now.