Albion Women Manager Siobhan Hodgetts-Still accepts Sunday’s defeat to AFC Bournemouth “wasn’t good enough.”
The Baggies exited the FAWNL Cup at the semi-final stage at the hands of the Cherries, as goals either side of half-time were enough to secure victory for the visitors.
Hodgetts-Still’s team made history with their deepest run into the competition, beating their quarter-final campaign in 2016/17.
Siobhan said: “It’s not the result that we wanted today. We wanted to get ourselves into a cup final.
“Over the course of 90 minutes, I felt that Bournemouth deserved the win. For the first 25 minutes, I thought we competed and had some really good chances to get the lead.
“The final pass, or the execution in those periods just wasn’t good enough. When we came out after the break, I didn’t think there was enough desire to go and get into a cup final, I felt we defended well, but in terms of our desire and quality - we were lacking today.
“I don’t think we deserved it today. The Wolves game was a great example of that battle, but that comes with the fixture as a local derby and we definitely saw that right until the end in that one.
“We didn’t see much of that today, especially in the second half. We went a goal down and we maybe lost a bit of concentration, our mentality changed from there - we need to learn how to get past that and back into the game.
“We can take pride in the run as a whole, it’s the furthest we’ve ever got in the FAWNL Cup, we take pride in that. We would’ve liked to get to a final but we’ll move on quickly from this.”
Defender Zoe Creaney agreed with the Manager, and admits that Sunday’s showing at the Nationwide Windows Arena wasn’t “a good reflection” of themselves.
Creaney said: “I don’t think we were at the races today. First duels, second duels, they beat us to them and we couldn’t keep the ball.
“They put the back-line under a lot of pressure and when you’re under that much pressure, you’re going to concede goals. We’ve got a lot more to give and I don’t think that was a very good reflection of us.
“Credit to Bournemouth, their front-line is top quality. There were three or four players playing against us who were causing all sorts of problems for us.
“There’s only so much we can do against that quality and under that pressure.
“It’s a disappointed dressing room, it would’ve been great to get to the final. I do think that if we look at the overall picture, we’ve got to the final four, we’ve done very well in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup, and we’ve got the Birmingham County FA Challenge Cup semi-final to look forward to.
“We need to leave this performance where it is and step it up for the next game.”
