Interview

Miedema – This win could make all the difference

Vivianne Miedema believes our record-breaking win against Bristol City on Sunday afternoon could make all the difference at the end of the season.

The Netherlands international scored six goals and set a WSL record in the process.

We spoke to Miedema after the match and this is what she said:

on the performance…

I think we played really good football, I had expected Bristol to have played a little better after our last game in the cup. It’s obviously hard for them as well and instead of stopping playing, we played really well for 90 minutes and we wanted to score more goals and I think that says a lot about the team today.  

on the message the win sends…

We want to win the league again and qualify for the Champions League and we knew that the last couple of games have been hard for us and very difficult. I think 1-0 or 2-0 wins won’t be enough at the end of the season and getting a good goal difference today might make a difference at the end of the season.

on her individual performance…

I don’t really think I’ve played like that before. I felt really good today and I was probably happier with my assists today. I felt really good and I’m happy that I could help the team and I’m happy that we won today.

on her fitness…

I do feel a little closer [to full fitness], but also I’m looking forward to the Christmas holidays. There’s three more games until then and we need to focus on them, we need to get six points in the league and win the League Cup game. I think we’ve got the players to play a three at the back and a four and that really helps us.

on the importance of goal difference…

At half-time we did say it to the girls that we need to work on our goal difference and we did that in the second half as well. I think it’s really easy to play a good first half and then drop off in the second half but I think we kept our level up and we scored more goals in the second half.

on taking the result into the next game…

We just need to be confident because the next game is going to be tough away to Reading and we need to be ready again. We need to train as well as we have all week and we need to win that game because it’s really important.

on the fluidity of the team…

A lot of our players can play different positions, Lisa Evans can come in, Beth can come in and obviously Danielle van de Donk and Jordan Nobbs. I think that’s the good thing about us right now, we don’t need to just stand in our positions, we need to just mix it up and I’m really happy about that and it suits the other players and it helped us a lot today.