Karen Hills: "We’ve had a tough period of games"

The club spoke to Charlton Athletic Women Manager Karen Hills following yesterday’s defeat to Lewes at The Dripping Pan.

Yesterday’s loss is only the Addicks’ second defeat in the league so far, having won three league wins in a row prior to Sunday’s game. 

“Obviously we’re disappointed, we came here with a game plan to try and affect the game and to win. I thought we were OK, they’re a team at the moment that are in a transition, we’re still building so it’s still really early days for us. I think we’ve had a great start already to the season which has been great for us, so the momentum of winning games and that feeling has been good but ultimately when you lose games you have to reflect and look at all the stuff you can take and learn from and I think we will do that.

“At the end of the day, this league is tough, you have to work from minute one until the end and credit to Lewes I thought they did enough today to win the game.

“Conceding two goals in the first half is always going to be a challenge, but then we re-grouped, we went back in and we spoke really positively about the character within the team and how we were going to come out and be effective and to see who was going to be able to get that goal that could potentially bring us back into the game. Obviously we couldn’t find that in the second half but I think overall we’re disappointed, we know we weren’t at our best today, we know we didn’t look maybe as hungry as we have done. Maybe that comes down to a three-game week but at the same time there’s no excuses.”

There is no game this weekend due to the international break, with seven Charlton players being called-up to represent their country.

“We re-group, we go again and we have that international break now that has probably come at a good time. Some of our players will go away, we’ll have some of the other players back with us at the training ground and we’ll look at what needs to happen to be better.

“We’ve had a tough period of games, fixtures coming thick and fast. Everything we have done over the past couple of weeks has been about game plans, we haven’t had much training so we are able to go back on to the training pitch and get that fun element back in, that competitiveness back in. We’ll do a lot of that this week, look to move forward and we’ve got a big game coming up against Sunderland.”

The Addicks still have a 100% win record at The Oakwood and will be looking to bounce back against Sunderand on Sunday, October 31st.

“The Oakwood has been great for us this season so far, however it’s another top opposition that Sunderland are and I think we can’t take any team lightly and you saw that today. If you’re not on your game from minute one there’s some fantastic players in this league that can hurt you at any given time and we got punished. We’ve just got to make sure that we’ve got our game plan right, make sure the players reflect and make sure that we’re in a place to go again and we will be because that’s the kind of group we’ve got.

“We’ve got a lot of players that are willing to run through walls for each other and we’ve got players that are just coming back to full fitness as well which is always key.”

Click here to buy a ticket to Charlton Women v Sunderland.

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