Norwich City Women’s head coach Shaun Howes was pleased with the passion and determination he saw from his side in their 3-0 defeat to London Seaward on Sunday afternoon.
The Canaries were looking to bounce back from their previous 8-0 loss to Billericay, putting in an improved performance against the London-based team, despite the losing result.
Reflecting on their performance, Howes said he was impressed with a much more positive display, but admitted he was disappointed to concede two of the three goals from set-pieces.
“It was definitely an improved performance," he said. "The problem last week, we were a bit shell-shocked with regards to the result last week, but they certainly reacted really well and put in a much more positive performance.
“I think they showed more passion and determination to not concede, we conceded two from set-pieces, which is disappointing, but it does happen.
“In open play, they had a couple of half chances, but we kept them to very few. As the game went on, we became more of a threat. There’s definitely more positives, the girls seemed a lot more determined and took a lot more pride in their performance this week.
“I think set-pieces is something we’ve been keen to make sure we’re good at because we know how important they are in the game, but they were two very good deliveries, and it was difficult to defend against.
“The second one was a little bit sloppier; we could’ve been a bit more aggressive in our defending. It’s something to have a chat about, and we’ll have a look at it in training.”
After 60 minutes of play, City took control and created the better chances as they hunted a consolation goal, which left Howes wanting to see that grit from the beginning of each game.
“We were excellent and by far the better team in the latter minutes, we were more composed, had better finishing, and we could’ve taken them really close.
“We chatted after the game and said that’s the reaction we want, but let’s try get that reaction from minute one, not minute 60 or 70 after conceding the third goal.
“There’s a lot of pressure on them because of what happened last week, but once the pressure was gone, they started to look a bit more confident in what they were doing.
“The energy in the last 30 minutes was magnificent, but it shouldn’t take 60 minutes to get there, so we’ll be really determined to make sure we bring that energy from minute one.”
With more personnel available for Sunday's home fixture against Enfield Town Ladies, Howes expects to see a bit more quality from his side as they can rely on the depth of their squad.
“We’ll have a couple more senior players back, we were missing six of our forward line on Sunday, but the players that came in did brilliantly. We’ll have a bit more firepower, a bit more depth.
“It’s a brand-new team, yesterday we had two players on the pitch who played in our last game last season, it’s a completely different team and they’re still getting used to playing with each other, we expected a slow start. As long as we make small steps in each training session and every match day, I think we’ll be okay.”
For more information on how you can purchase tickets to Norwich City Women’s game against Enfield, at 2pm, at The Nest, click here.