Sheehan: Important We Treat Bournemouth With the Same Respect as Anyone in Our Division
Sunday, 15th Dec 2024 10:52 by Kallum Brisset
Town Women manager Joe Sheehan has stressed AFC Bournemouth must not be underestimated as the Blues prepare to face the Cherries in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup third round at the Martello Ground, Felixstowe this afternoon (KO 1pm) with a big fourth-round tie at WSL Manchester City the prize on offer to the winners.
Sheehan’s side will attempt to do battle with Bournemouth once again after the initial scheduling last weekend was postponed due to heavy rain.
From the outside, Town appear heavy favourites over lower-league opposition but this weekend’s visitors are in excellent form sitting top of the FAWNL Division One South West, a level below the Blues, having won all nine league matches so far this season.
It will be a clash between two table-toppers as the Blues lead the way in the FAWNL Southern Premier Division with an unbeaten league record so far this campaign.
“It’s really hard to gauge where teams in the league below are actually at,” Sheehan said. “You get some that are really striving towards the top and some that are finding it difficult down the bottom.
“Clearly they’ve motored through their division, they’ve had 13 wins altogether with cup competitions and have beaten everybody they’ve played. It’s good to see a club that is really supportive, probably similar to ourselves that are trying to progress through the pathway.
“They’ve got some players that we’re quite familiar with. They will be really confident, they’ll see themselves as the underdogs and want to come to us and cause a bit of an upset. We are very aware of that because we have been there on previous occasions, so we know what it takes to beat a team in the league above.
“If you’re not at it and give yourself one opportunity to switch off or take the game for granted then we could be on the wrong end of a result. It’s really important to treat them with the same respect we would treat anyone in our division and anticipate a competitive and challenging game.”
Town reached the third round stage of the competition following a dramatic victory at league rivals Hashtag United in round two, which saw the Blues overcome the Essex side on penalties after a 2-2 draw.
The Tags twice led in the contest but Sophie Peskett’s 96th-minute leveller sent the game to spot-kicks where goalkeeper Natalia Negri saved twice to send Town into the next stage of the tournament.
“I didn’t really enjoy much of it if I’m being totally honest,” Sheehan reflected. “Hashtag are a really unique outfit, it’s always a transitional game, heavy-metal football. They’re really solid at what they do.
“Add a 50 miles per hour wind to that and it makes it a really ugly game to be a part of. I knew that it wouldn’t be a game we would perform well in, but ultimately the group found a way and kept believing.
“Fortunately we had good players who can come up and produce some really good things. A great pass from Lucy O’Brien and a good run and finish from Sophie Peskett to take it to penalties.
“I knew we would win those, I was really confident if we took it to penalties we would win it. We’ve been really strong in penalties for some time now. I knew Nat would save a few, however at full-time she told me she hadn’t saved a penalty before which totally baffled me.
“It was an important result, we overcame a really tough opposition which sets up a really exciting game against Bournemouth.
“To come from behind twice against Oxford and Hashtag, which was new to us this season so it was good for us to experience that albeit we don’t want to do it on too many occasions.
“But the fact that we’ve proved we can go behind in quite big games against difficult opposition and still come out with a positive result is really pleasing. It puts us in a really good position to try and finish the year really strong.”
With the draw for the next round having been made during the week, it was announced that the winner of this weekend’s cup tie would travel to Women’s Super League side Manchester City in round four.
City currently sit second in the top flight and have won the Women’s FA Cup on three occasions. They boast a side with a plethora of talent including England internationals Alex Greenwood, Chloe Kelly and Lauren Hemp, as well as Khadija Shaw and Vivianne Miedema.
A trip to the blue side of Manchester is familiar territory for Town, though, having visited in the fifth round in February 2020 where they ultimately were beaten 10-0.
On the reaction to this year’s draw, Sheehan said: “We obviously visited them previously. Being that underdog, that David vs Goliath, fourth-tier team against a Super League team as it was back then was a bit of a wow moment.
“Because it’s away at the same place I didn’t really get that same feeling. Equally we’ve been so focused on a) knocking out Bournemouth, and b) trying to compete as best as we can in our division.
“It’s not a great tie for me personally, I think the players rightly so will be super excited if we can get there, but it’s going to take a lot of work to prepare to play them. It’s going to take an intense period of planning to try and be really competitive and in some ways that can be a bit of a distraction from what our real focus is on.
“It’s something we would have to enjoy and embrace. If we can get there it will be a mark for us to see how much progress we’ve made since we last played them, but I would have preferred a softer home tie if possible.”
Reflecting further on the previous trip nearly five years ago when Sheehan was only a year into the job, he said: “It was a really young group back then with a mixture of players who had been here for some time as well and it was great that they got to experience that.
“It was a really tough afternoon, a really eye-opening experience to a world-leading level. I remember seeing their team sheet thinking ‘oh my goodness’ and I could still reel off that starting XI now that we played against.
“Six or seven of their squad back then had been in the England squad that played in the World Cup semi-final against the USA nine months previous, so obviously the gulf between us back then was huge. It’s pretty big now, but we are better than we were.”
Despite the excitement of the FA Cup, it is clear that the Blues’ priority this season is a promotion battle to try and get into the Championship for what would be the first time in the club’s history.
Town’s recent form, which has seen them win their last five league matches to fire them to the division’s summit, has also seen Sheehan nominated for the FAWNL Premier Division Manager of the Month for November.
“I’ve not really spared a thought thinking too much that we are the best team in the division,” Sheehan said. “What we have learnt is that every team in our division pose a unique threat.
“We’ve spoken about Hashtag at length, but Oxford have a good blend of good players who can do damage and Watford are a really good footballing team.
“Whilst we’ve had games in hand I’ve never really seen us as the team that are first. To be there halfway through is obviously where we want to be, but we know the swing can change really quickly in the space of a couple of games.
“If we can start 2025 strong and continue the momentum that we’ve had so far, tick the games off one-by-one and see where we end up.
“We’ve got a style that is probably our go-to, but we accept that at our level that won’t always give us the best possible results. We would have probably stuck with that over the course of the last two or three years and felt that we’ll keep trying to improve it.
“We’ve certainly changed from last year where we have become a little bit more pragmatic and tried to enjoy a different side to the game. Had we not changed, I think we would have been knocked out by Hashtag two or three weeks ago so I think it’s been useful.”
Sheehan concluded by acknowledging that the promotion to the Premier League by the men’s team has helped with extra funding on the women’s side of the football club and he hopes that some of the summer recruitment can be significant in helping his side achieve promotion and succeed in the long run.
He said: “We were fortunate that the men gained promotion because it meant we could increase investment budget to allow us to evolve and bring in players to improve our squad.
“We’ve hopefully built a better squad that has the ingredients to not only do enough at this level but give us that next step in the league above rather than getting there and going back to the drawing board.”
TWTD/ITFC/Matchday Images
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