By Nik Brumsack
Laura Harvey says her team are determined to avoid defeat against Birmingham City Ladies on Sunday - and ensure they complete an unbeaten Women’s Super League season.
The Ladies have won 10 and drawn three of their previous 13 matches, and a win or draw on Sunday will see them become the first team to go through a WSL campaign without losing.
Despite having sealed the WSL title last weekend, Harvey insists her team will be doing everything in their power to create history.
“This would just be another notch on the list of things they’d like to do,” she told Arsenal.com.
“Knowing them as I do, they’ll definitely be going in with that attitude. No matter what I say to them, they will want to keep that unbeaten run going.
“I haven’t spoken about it all year because it was never about that. It was always about winning things. Now we’ve won the league, it’s big to keep the unbeaten run, but it’s bigger to win the Continental Cup.”
Sunday’s clash will be the first of two in just three days, with the teams again meeting in Wednesday’s Continental Cup final at Underhill. And Harvey believes a positive result in the league fixture will help to build momentum for the cup final.
“We’ve had a lot of games this year, where we’ve played the same team over a short space of time and we’ve learnt a lot from how to deal with that.
“That’s what Sunday is about. Don’t give too much away, so they don’t know what to expect from you on Wednesday.
“We have to make sure Wednesday is the biggest game out of the lot.”
The boss is mindful of the threat posed by Birmingham, but hopes to have a full strength squad available for the double-header.
“Birmingham are hard to beat. The game is never over, no matter what the score is.
“They’ve got two good centre forwards in Rachel Williams and Jodie Taylor who scored a lot of goals this season and I think their set-pieces are a massive threat.
“Gilly Flaherty is OK. Kelly Smith came through Thursday well. Hopefully Niamh Fahey can get some minutes. Yvonne Tracy pulled up a little bit against Barcelona, but we hope she’ll be alright for Sunday.”
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