Kim: “We’re resilient, we’ll move on and regroup”

Kim Little said that the highs and lows of the past few days can be the nature of having multiple games in quick succession in football.

Following such an emphatic 4-1 win away to Lyon to reach the final of the UEFA Women’s Champions League on Sunday, we were beaten 5-2 away to Aston Villa in the Barclays Women’s Super League on Wednesday.

Reflecting on the match, Kim said: “Obviously just disappointed. That wasn't the performance we expect of ourselves. We expect higher standards than that and we're just disappointed in the result. It's over now, so we have to move on but we'll regroup and come back together and we’ll focus on the next game on Monday against Brighton.

“It was a quick turnaround but we've got a great squad and that's what we want. We want the games and we want to be in all competitions. So we'll learn from that in the sense of there's a high, but that's football. We all know that, as players and people working in the game, it can go from a real high to low quite quickly.

“But we’re resilient and we know our qualities and we'll move on and regroup, improve on the things that were not good today and take that into our next game.”

Asked how Villa prevented us from creating enough goalscoring opportunities to win the match, she said it was more about how they broke through us.

“I don't think it was about the goal scoring opportunities, to be honest,” she said. “I think we created, there were gaps in their system. They obviously caught us in the break a lot. Maybe we just had too many spaces defensively and weren't quite in the right positions at the right time, and they exploited that well in this game which we didn't manage well.

“So I think we showed quite a lot at the end, obviously scored two goals and quite quick succession. We just weren't solid enough on defence.”

Attention now turns to Brighton on Monday, where we’ll be looking to get back to winning ways to end our WSL season on a high.

“We’ve got two more league games left, and a Champions League final,” Kim added. “We've got a great occasion against Brighton and then Man Utd at home, at Emirates again, and then our trip to Lisbon so we'll be going for three wins.”