Albion Women Manager Siobhan Hodgetts-Still says her side’s defeat away at Stoke City “wasn’t good enough” when marked against the “standards” set in recent weeks.
The Baggies were beaten 3-0 at the bet365 Stadium on Sunday afternoon, where they had countless opportunities to score, but couldn’t manage a single strike in Staffordshire.
The boss has challenged the team to change their “mindset”, if they want to achieve their goals as they continue the final push of 2025/26.
She said: “I’m really disappointed with that performance. To come here and get beaten 3-0, by our own standards - that performance wasn’t good enough.
“We were flat in-posession, I thought Stoke wanted it more today. They were the better team on the day.
“There were so many missed chances for us in both halves. We created some really good chances, more than we have done in the last few weeks.
“We went through on goals four times, but if you don’t finish those, you get punished. The difference today was that Stoke took their chances, they didn’t have as many but they were clinical in the box.
“If we’d have scored one of those chances, it might’ve been a different game. We can’t keep our heads down when we go behind, regardless of the scoreline.
“We have to remain positive, come together as a group, and try to get back into the game. I felt with 10 minutes to go, we didn’t show enough urgency to put pressure on the opposition - by that we didn’t deserve to win today.
“The girls know that performance wasn’t good enough and we’ve spoken about that at the end there. We’ll look at it on Tuesday, see where we went wrong and what needs to change.
“It’s going to be a difficult game next week, Halifax came to our place last time out and wanted it more. Our attitude and mindset needs to change if you want to go and get three points back in the league next week.”
Captain Liv Rabjohn agreed with the boss’ comments, and says that as one of the leaders of the group, her main aim is to “keep everyone going” heading into next week’s clash with Halifax.
The skipper said: “It was nowhere near good enough today. From start to finish, we were second to things, lacked a bit of passion and desire.
“These aren’t the standards that we’ve set over the last few weeks. We’ve got to be better going forwards and it’s important that we look back at today, analyse it, see what went wrong and build from there.
“It’s all about how clinical we can be. We’ve created four or five really good chances, they’ve had three and scored three - at the end of the day that’s football.
“The more chances we create, the more likely we are to put the ball in the net. That’ll be something we look at.
“I’m keen to try and get everyone together, keep everyone going and give them encouragement. That’s what I’ll try to bring now until next week.”
