Albion Women Manager Siobhan Hodgetts-Still believes her team put in a “better” showing in the second half of their Birmingham County FA Challenge Cup win over Leafield Athletic on Wednesday evening.
The Baggies struggled against the resolute visiting defensive unit, leaving the boss “frustrated” following their first-half showing.
But, in the end, forward Rhianne Oakley was the one to pick the lock of the Leafield defence, dispatching the only goal of the game to send the home side through to the semi-finals.
Hodgetts-Still said: “I’m frustrated with that performance but delighted that we got through to the next round. Performance-wise, in the first half, it wasn’t good enough.
“What we want from a West Brom team and how we want to play, that first half wasn’t good enough. In the second-half, it improved, and you saw that with the chances that we created.
“There’ll be improvements, we spoke at the end of the game, the girls know that’s not good enough – they agreed with that post-match. There’ll be a changed mindset and we’re looking forward to the Wolves game on Sunday and hopefully we can progress to the next round of the cup.
“Rhi took her goal really well by exploiting the back line. There were several opportunities that we could’ve taken too.
“I thought Rhi did really well, she worked hard, closed down centre-backs and did well at that. She didn’t really have much into her in the first half, but she had more opportunities in the second and I’m glad she got the goal.
“She works hard and hopefully that gives her some confidence moving forwards.”
Forward Oakley bagged her third goal of the campaign in Wednesday night’s win at the Alexander Stadium, she described the team performance as one to “shrug off” fairly quickly – with a Black Country derby to come on Sunday.
Rhianne Oakley: “I think we’re slightly lucky to come away with the win. We’re not best pleased with our performance, we know our standards and I don’t think we were near that.
“Leafield had a couple of chances that they could’ve put away and the game could’ve gone a different way. We know it’s nice to get a win and to get through to the semi-finals.
“We were struggling in the first half, Shev said to be calm on the ball, don’t force it and to just play our football – we think that worked when it came to the second half.
“I played the ball into Ella, I saw us being one-v-one and I thought to make that run down the channel. It was a great ball from her, and then I thought to get on the end of it and hit it first time.
“On a personal level, scoring as many as I can is my aim, I want to help the team out. I want to see how many I can get for the season.
“This is a performance that we have to shrug off fairly quickly. We need to go into the Wolves game fairly fresh in training on Friday now to come away with a better performance on Sunday.”
