Spring hasn’t officially sprung, but it’s certainly felt like it at Sobha Realty Training Centre this week!
Heading towards the end of a March week full of sunshine, Renee Slegers was asked about how her players are blossoming in the business end of the season.
“Beautiful question! I see the blossoms as well. I love it, I’m riding my bike into work in the mornings so it’s lovely to see. I think, staying with the weather, it makes such an impact for human beings and you see more smiles I think. Now while the sun is out, which is really lovely, that’s good and spirits have been very high in the group.
“Talking about blossoms and flourishing, we always try to be good as a collective and, if we’re good as a collective, then individuals can blossom, bloom and flourish.
“I don’t know what the right English word is but that’s what we try to do and I’m happy with it not being the same individuals all the time, but it’s right across the squad, which means we’re good as a collective at the moment and we’re willing to do the work and do the job for individuals to be good in the games.
“I think that also says something about our unpredictability as a team, that we can do it in different ways against different teams.”
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Liverpool is the next team to prove our unpredictability against in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup quarter-finals but, with a new interim manager at the helm in Amber Whitely, they’re something of an unknown themselves.
She got a 1-0 win away to Crystal Palace in their first game after Matt Beard’s departure.
“They changed formation and the way they did things in the game against Crystal Palace and we have to be ready to exploit that but at the same time we know they’ve been playing in another formation in a different style with Matt Beard, who has done an incredible job I think,” Renee added.
“We’ll see what they think suits the game on Sunday, what they’re going to come with, and we pride ourselves on problem solving as a group - staff and players - so that’s something we’re going to have to do really well on Sunday.
“I think they have a strong belief in who they are and how they can deal with things. They’re not afraid of going high and pressing, that’s at least what they’ve been doing before and then stepping out and being aggressive going forward, so I think they’ve been successful, they play to the players’ qualities, especially in the backline I think.
“We’ve played a lot of games where we had to prepare for different scenarios. We prepare for one scenario and then the opposition comes out and does something else because they play against us and want to deal with the threats that we have, so I think we faced that a lot of times this season and we might have to face that again on Sunday, so I’m quite confident that we will find the solution for whatever we play.”
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