Joe Montemurro praised his side's patience and ruthlessness in front of goal as we beat title rivals Manchester City on Sunday.
We recorded our third consecutive victory in all competitions when Vivianne Miedema's 43rd-minute strike handed us all three points at Meadow Park As a result we climb above City into second place in the Women's Super League table.
We spoke to Montemurro after the match and this is what he said...
on bouncing back from defeat against Chelsea…
Chelsea was round four, this was round five and if we think that beating both teams is the only way we’ll win the league we’re wrong. There’s a lot of teams in this league and every team is a danger and collectively whoever has won the most games at the end of the season will win the league.
on us sticking to the gameplay…
I think it was evident that the team stuck to the gameplay today. Especially off the ball, they didn’t have any solutions and weren’t able to find anyway through and all credit to the players because we worked during the week on certain things. We worked on dragging players away and on our build-up play in terms of exploiting some areas and in truth we could have scored more goals.
on Man City’s set-up…
They did sit deep, not just the offensive line but even the midfield line. Their midfield line weren’t coming out at all and we couldn’t find spaces in-between the lines which they did on purpose because they know how we play. We had to prepare one way, go round one way then wait for the openings and then the chances started to come.
on how we adapted to their tactics…
By man-marking they allowed Jennifer Beattie to drive forward with the ball and then we started to put Leah inside a little more and she was jumping a little higher in the second half. I think the goal actually came from that, we pushed Leah a little higher and she dropped in and we played out, beat the line and we scored the goal. We then started to work with fullbacks coming inside, we felt that we could go a certain way if we move them inside and we were able to expose them.
on his faith in Miedema…
Viv gives her all for 90 minutes every week and if it means we have to take precautions in the week to make sure she’s ready, you can see why.
on his team’s patience…
In truth, it’s been our downfall in games where we haven’t been quite successful because we’re jumping and breaking lines and exposing spaces so for us it’s very important we keep our structure when the opposition has the ball. It was important that we remain patient and keep this things right.
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