Albion Women Manager Siobhan Hodgetts-Still admits her side weren’t “good enough” in their FAWNL Northern Premier defeat to Derby County on Sunday afternoon.
The Baggies were downed by two second-half strikes from the Ewe Rams, as they failed to drum up any real positivity of their own - despite strong backing from supporters at The Hawthorns.
Hodgetts-Still believes the visitors were worthy of their win, and has called on her side to move on quickly from defeat in B71.
She said: “I don’t think we were good enough today. I thought we were miles off it at times, our quality and decision-making were poor at times.
“Derby wanted it more and they deserved the win. They were hard to beat, they defended their box well, too.
“I thought we could’ve made better decisions and done more to hurt them in the final third. They’ve scored a deflection and scored a worldy from our mistake as well, but ultimately, they wanted to stay up more than we wanted to finish fourth in the league.
“Credit to Derby, and they were the better side out there. We had a great turnout today, and we’re thankful for that, but we’re equally disappointed not to put on a performance for them.
“We’ll go away, assess this one, and move on quite quickly.”
Midfielder Seren Watkins entered the fray with just 20 minutes to play, and Albion a goal down - but expressed her disappointment in the performance, particularly considering the turnout from the Baggies faithful.
She said: “I think it’s disappointing, we wanted to win today, not just for the fans who came down, but also because we want to finish as high as possible in the table.
“We have eyes on fourth place, which is still possible, but today would’ve been a massive three points for us to have got us there. We’re really disappointed to have lost the game.
“Derby took their goals well, the second finish was brilliant, but again, we need to be better in that final third and we had chances which weren’t really clear cut. We need to look at our performance and really build on it going into Middlesbrough.
“We need to be really positive going into Middlesbrough, we can’t let today’s performance and result affect us too much. We know they’re very physical and that they’ve hurt a lot of teams in this league - we have to stay positive and remember what we do well.
“It was nice to see all of the fans, we appreciate the support, so to see all of them in the crowd was nice. We’re just disappointed we couldn’t get three points for them all.”
