Karen Hills: "We'll be ready to fight"

Karen Hills

Karen Hills talks about defeat to West Ham in the Subway Players Cup:

"I think I probably sound like a little bit of a broken record. Disappointed, haven't won a football match. Heart, desire, passion, second half.

"We did show it as well in the first half, but I think two soft goals from us, definitely we were not pleased with that. The principles of defending, balls in behind, I think we needed to be better. I can't knock second half performance, again, the fight, the determination, the way that they carried themselves, they kept believing and there were some good moments there.

"I thought we looked a good side, we were brave on the ball, we played some nice football, created some good moments, but again, we come up against a WSL team that took their chances. 

"I thought we were completely okay, we were in control, 30-35 minutes, nothing was really causing us a problem.

"The shape, we were dealing with individuals, just the ball over the top. Ball and player went past and yeah, obviously it was a sucker punch and then the reset moment, obviously it's always that challenge, when you concede a goal, you have to reset and stay focused, concentrate and then we get hit again, so that's something we'll definitely have to address and make sure that the players understand that reset moment and what we need to do in that five-minute spell after either scoring or conceding. 

"But yeah, we scored a good goal in the second half, some really good movement, some players coming on that helped us gain a little bit more energy.

"I thought they looked really good, Grace Johnston back on the pitch tonight, which was great to see and yeah, listen, there were some good performances today and we're still fighting and we will continue to fight. 

"She's [Jodie Hutton] instrumental in what we do and that's credit to her and her determination and her work rate. As soon as she comes on, she causes problems and we know what she can do.

"We know there's still room for improvement, she knows it and she's working really, really hard to keep improving and I thought she'd done that superbly today, put another fantastic ball in and fair play to Grace Johnston, who was on the other end. 

"it's another tough game, right? It doesn't get much bigger than Chelsea coming to the Valley.

"So yeah, we know it's going to be tough. We need to really make sure that the players are in the best place they can be with their recovery and we'll be ready. 

"We'll be ready to fight, we'll be ready to do everything we can for each other and make it as difficult as we possibly can.

"And we just encourage all the Charlton fans to really stay behind us. They are, they're staying behind us. They can see a team that's out there fighting week in, week out.

"We're doing our absolute best with everything that we have and I think the supporters are proud of that. We just now need to try and turn those into a couple of positive moments where potentially we can get some points. 

"But this weekend is going to be extremely tough but what we're going to do is make it really difficult as best we can and put our best foot forward."

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