It’s been 650 days since Leicester have had a WSL away win and yesterday was our best chance yet to break that run. And we just about scraped a point, drawing 1-1 thanks to a 97th minute Shannon O’Brien equaliser to cancel out Shekiera Martinez’s goal early in the second half.
This game was rich with subtext, a relegation battle, Rehanne Skinner facing her former assistant Rick Passmoor, two teams who have struggled to score going to battle as the immovable force meets the other immovable force. In the end it had the feeling of a countdown clock, ticking our time away as we laboured to grab a point from the jaws of defeat.
There was a slight change in shape for Leicester here, with Noemie Mouchon up front alone with Hlin Eiriksdottir and Emily van Egmond behind her. It’s a classic Christmas tree formation with Hannah Cain at right wing back rather than her usual, narrower position in a front two.
Last week I said Mouchon was our best chance of goals, and while she didn’t manage to score yesterday, her unstoppable confidence caused West Ham problems today. Every time she’s on the ball it feels like she can run through any defence. It feels like Mouchon has a point to prove after so long away injured.
Mouchon was the recipient of an positively 1970s tackle from Katrina Gorry just outside West Ham’s box in a central position. It was hard but fair and Gorry was unfortunate to receive a yellow card for it. I put this sort of tackle in the ‘you love to see it’ camp. Cain and Julie Thibaud stood over the ball and Cain lashed it into the mass of bodies in the box and the danger dissipated as quickly as it arose. But it felt like a promising sign of things to come.
We dominated the first 20 minutes or so of the game. Martinez was a constant threat up front for the Hammers, but she was isolated against our back three and Chantelle Swaby had the better of her whenever West Ham managed to break our sustained spells of pressure and launch the ball away. Leicester were playing with genuine confidence, dominating possession and always being the first to second balls. It felt like Passmoor had set up a side to win and it felt refreshing compared to our usual, more defensive play.
But then the tide started to turn and West Ham had the better of the remainder of the first half. New Lioness, Anouk Denton caused us lots of problems bombing on from left back. She cut inside with a mazy run and found time and space for a curling shot just outside the box the hit the bar. It was a reminder that we needed to make our early dominance pay off with a goal, but from that point onwards it was nearly all West Ham. There was a passage of play where a Denton cross needed Julie Thibaud to block it on the goal line, which bounced out to Martinez, leaving Janina Leitzig to need to make another brilliant save to keep the score 0-0. Leitzig has made the most saves of any keeper in the WSL this season and that is a stat I’m sure surprises no one.
Hannah Cain did look dangerous cutting inside from the right wing back position. This gave her more space that she normally has and Thibaud is more than capable of stepping up into any space she vacates. But her defensive work was a little suspect, especially against the burgeoning brilliance of Denton on West Ham’s left. Just before the end of the first half, Sam Tierney pounced on a sloppy pass between West Ham’s defence and found herself unmarked with time to slot the ball away. It must have all just been too much as she missed it by miles and even at the time, it felt like something that’s going to haunt her for a good while yet. Olivia McLoughlin had another good chance a few minutes afterwards, with on an acrobatic save from Kinga Szemik between her and the goal, but it somehow felt like our chance had gone already.
At the second half kick off, West Ham lined up with almost all their players on the right wing, and they all chased the ball for some reason. It’s more rugbyfication nonsense, and I personally am dead against it. I don’t know what the intention was, but I doubt it was conceding the ball within a second of kick-off, but here we are. We started as we meant to go on, with Asmita Ale and McLoughlin peppering the box with crosses. Every member of this team would run through a brick wall to score a goal if that’s what it takes. This level of grit and determination feels more of a given against the bigger sides, where we are consistently on the back foot and it feels promising to see it against a team more on our level with a realistic chance of a win on the table.
In the 50th minute, the need for a goal suddenly doubled, Denton again crossing in from the left and Martinez bundling it in at Leitzig’s near post. It was a baffling goal, and it felt cruel. In the immediate aftermath, our confidence looked completely shot and West Ham nearly scored another.
We managed to settle things down over the next ten minutes, we needed to score _twice_ if we were going to get that first win of the season.
30 minutes to go.
Szemik in the West Ham goal pulled up with what looked like a bad hamstring injury whilst about to take a goal kick. She received treatment and signalled to the bench that she needed to come off, and for some reason she stayed on. She even had to do the classic Sunday League move of having a defender take the goal kick. This had to be something that Leicester tested; we needed to be trying shots as soon as we were within a reasonable distance of the goal. The kind of save that Szemik pulled off against McLoughlin wouldn’t be possible. But we didn’t manage to really get forward, and instead we had to fend off more waves of West Ham attacks. It was getting a bit dispiriting.
20 minutes to go.
With two goals needed for a win now, that Tierney miss was growing in significance with every minute that passed. With time running out, we bought on Jutta Rantala for van Egmond, and Mouchon and Eiriksdottir came off for Rosella Ayane and Shannon O’Brien a few minutes later. Putting fresh legs in attacking positions was no doubt a positive move, but it started to feel like fate had turned its back on Leicester City here, and the best we can hope for is a last-minute equaliser. A win hasn’t felt more distant this season.
10 minutes to go.
West Ham tried to repeat their trick of causing havoc at the near post, hoping to bundle one in, and it almost worked. Twice. Passmoor had a moment with his attacking players by the bench as he brought on 17-year-old academy graduate Nelly Las. I’d hoped he was giving foolproof instructions to score 2 last-minute goals, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
5 minutes to go.
Las played a nice cross into the box but no one could quite get onto the end of it. West Ham had almost everyone in their box, if we were going to score it needed to be something special. When 7 minutes of added time went up, you could hear the groans from the West Ham fans and imagine the feeling of the players’ hearts sinking. We plugged away at creating something, but nothing was quite coming off as a real attempt on goal. In the last seconds of the game, O’Brien was found unmarked on the far side of West Ham’s goal and she found the space to get something on it and put the ball into the net. It was an incredible sense of relief and must have been gutting for West Ham. It felt like a win in the moment, we have passed up one of our best chances for a victory this season but there will be a few more.
We’re still 5 points ahead of Brighton, with West Ham and Liverpool now having a point each and us on 6, in 9th place. Next up we’ve got Brighton away, who are actually just one place above us in the league They’ve lost England hero Michelle Agyemang to the dreaded ACL but they are still some way ahead of us in terms of quality. Our next run of games in the league is pretty tricky, our next likely win is West Ham at home in January, so let’s see if we can get there still with a good distance between us and the bottom 2.