Interview

‘We should be doing that to other teams’

Williamson

Leah Williamson cut a frustrated figure following our 4-1 defeat to title-rivals Chelsea on Sunday.

Our England international started alongside Louise Quinn at the heart of our defence as we uncharacteristically conceded three goals inside the opening 20 minutes.

We spoke to Williamson at full-time and this is what she said:

on the defeat…

It was very disappointing. We’re a team that should be doing that to others, not having that against us. Very frustrated but as this league goes and the games come thick and fast, we’ve got Conti Cup and FA Cup to think about so we can’t dwell on it. It’s done now , we can’t change it, we can only in our next performance try and rectify it. We’ve got a big game against Man City so we have to focus on that now and put today to bed. It hurts.

on why we struggled in the first half…

I think maybe the tactics were new to us and maybe if we’d used that system a couple of times then maybe it would have been a different story. I think it does come from that Chelsea know how to start a game, they came straight at us and they put balls into the box early on, a couple of them end up going in and that’s how it seemed. We couldn’t get pressure in the wide areas, allowing the cross on and to be honest the sun was an absolute factor in the first half as well. The fact we had that against us it just felt like we were boxed in, but all credit to Chelsea they put it on us.

on the emotions on the pitch…

He (Joe Montemurro) can take responsibility for tactics if he wants to, but the way we passed the ball to each other wasn’t good enough. That’s the way I like to play personally on reflection and as soon as we’re not doing that well enough, regardless of where you are on the pitch, we didn’t. It was nothing to do with him, that’s on us and we all needed to step it up. That was the message on the pitch as well but we did it too late.

on Chelsea’s strength…

They don’t usually attack from wide areas but we allowed them to do that. Unfortunately they ended up putting in great balls into the box which were hard to deal with. With the sun in the first half as well we almost couldn’t see anything so they used it to their advantage.

on the fixtures coming up…

We’ve just come back off a three game week as well and there’s a lot going on. We don’t have time to dwell on that so losing 4-1 over 1-0 it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the next result, a loss is a loss and three points is what we’ve given them. We know we need to put the work in now.

By Sam Cox