Brian Sorensen has challenged his Everton Women’s side to start rectifying their defensive frailties on Sunday when they travel to an in-form Tottenham Hotspur side, who are sitting in third with just one defeat in the Barclays Women’s Super League.
After a 5-0 defeat to Manchester United, the Danish head coach admits that players have been taking ownership in recent weeks as they look to make things right against Robert Vilahamn’s side this Sunday.
He said: ‘It’s vital [to be better defensively]. Tottenham have good players like Man United have, if we give them that amount of time and space in the box like United then they will hurt us.’
‘We need to be more tight at the back and players have taken ownership of that, we had 50% possession against United and not many teams in the league [are] doing that.’
Embed from Getty Images‘The goals we gave away were soft and didn’t take care of the situation in front of us, I said to the girls after that individual mistakes are killing us and it’s an accumulation of things.’
‘We just need to be better in executing things in both boxes, they scored three goals in the last 30 minutes of the game and that’s because we were 2-0 down and tried to go for it.’
‘The result doesn’t reflect our performance but you can’t concede five goals – it doesn’t matter what team you’re playing. We’ve been looking at it and analysing it since the game.’
‘We will try to be more ruthless on Sunday in both boxes, all the fixtures are tough in the WSL, it doesn’t matter who you play.’
‘We conceded on a set-piece against United and the ball was jumping around the box two or three times to get the first header and they were more aggressive to get there first and score.’
‘We have talked about those situations and how we can be better, we need to be at our best on Sunday because of Martha Thomas – but not just Martha as they are playing with a lot of confidence just now.’