Aston Villa: Carla Ward wants to rectify form vs Leicester | OneFootball

Aston Villa will face Leicester City in what will be their last game at the Poundland Bescot Stadium this season. Villa manager Carla Ward spoke ahead of this Saturday’s game against Leicester City. The manager believes it to be an opportunity she wants to get ‘maximum points from.’

Assistant coach Jennifer Foster will remain in charge of the Foxes this weekend following the dismissal of Willie Kirk. The club announced they had sacked the former manager ‘following an extensive internal disciplinary process and respecting the Club’s obligations to individual privacy, Willie was determined to have breached the team’s code of conduct to a degree that makes his position untenable’.

The opposition

Leicester currently sit three points below Villa in the Women’s Super League table, with Brighton in between. However, the Foxes have won just one of their last five games. Coming into this match, after a frustrating loss last week against the Seagulls, Leicester have more developments on the injury front.

“They’ve lost a few but I know Jen well. She was obviously one of my coaches when I was at Birmingham. So, she’ll have them organised for sure,” Ward said during her pre-match press conference. “We expect it to be a tough afternoon because they’ve had a fairly good season so far.”

In their previous meeting, away at Pirelli Stadium, an early goal from Rachel Daly separated the two sides. With this being Aston Villa’s last game at Bescot (they will still play West Ham and Manchester City at Villa Park as things stand) can they turn their home form around?

Villa’s grave home form

This season in the Women’s Super League, Villa have only won once at home. On this, Ward stated: “To be honest, it’s one of those. I think this will be the last game at Bescot this season and we want to try and finish on a high. We know naturally our away form is better, why is that? Couldn’t tell you.”

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Anna Patten to join the Girls in Green

The news broke today that Villa defender Anna Patten has pledged her allegiance to the Republic of Ireland. She will join the Girls in Green in their upcoming European qualifiers against France and England.

“[Republic of Ireland] are getting a top player but you’re getting a top person, let me tell you that now. She is a wonderful human being, she’s a great player. She’s tenacious, she can step in, her deep completions is arguably one of the best…

“Listen, will she make Ireland better? 100 percent. I think the Irish will absolutely love her.”

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Taking the positives from last week

After picking up the circulating illness that impacted several players ahead of last week’s match against Arsenal, Carla Ward will leave the walkie-talkie behind and come back to the sidelines against Leicester City.

However, it seems that Villa have a similar situation to last week with ‘same numbers’ out. Positive news came from the training ground this week for the West Midlands side as Kirsty Hanson — after picking up a calf injury — was ‘back on the grass running and looking like she was in a good place’.

After the loss to Arsenal at Villa Park, Ward hopes that the way she plans to lineup against Leicester will ‘reflect’ the way they want to ‘rectify’ the defeat. From what they knew would be a tough game against the Gunners, retrospectively there are ‘positives to take’ that they hope to bring with them into the WSL on Saturday.

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