Miquel keen to eliminate old habits as Leicester City continue search for first win | OneFootball

Leicester City head coach Amandine Miquel says that she is working hard to remove the team’s old habits as they continue their search for their first win of the season.

Miquel took charge of The Foxes in the summer and the team have taken one point from their opening three Barclays Women’s Super League matches.

Leicester City suffered a 2-0 home defeat to newly-promoted Crystal Palace last time out. When speaking to the media in a Leicester City press conference, head coach Miquel said that the team slipped into old habits in that match and that she wants to fully-integrate her own footballing philosophy.

“It’s things that can be worked on,” Miquel said when commenting on the errors that her side have made in the opening weeks of the season. “It is down to a mentality that was installed over a few seasons that we need to change. They often play backwards instead of playing forwards which gave us the pass-back against Arsenal which resulted in a goal, it was a mistake.

“It’s an overall philosophy, I think they’ve been used to playing more safely going backwards. I would prefer that to be the opposite but it’s hard to change something that has been done for a few seasons. We are working on that, so that the overall mindset is more global and that the specific game plan is more precise.

“On some games, it’ll work well because we have forgotten these old habits and sometimes, it will come back like it did against Crystal Palace. We have to reinforce the message every day, every week and change it all of the time.”

Reflecting on her side’s opening three league performances, Miquel has largely been pleased with what she has witnessed but she just wants to iron out the errors.

She said “Out of three games, I’m pleased with two, so it’s not a bad start. Obviously, we didn’t perform well in the third game against Crystal Palace but we know that, the players know that.

“It was a bad performance from ourselves, it was not due to the opponent. We put ourselves in difficult positions from how we played, so we know what we didn’t do well. We have to make sure that this type of performance happens as little as possible.”

Leicester City travel to Aston Villa for their next Barclays Women’s Super League fixture on Sunday. While The Foxes are yet to keep a clean sheet this season, Miquel sees areas in the opposition which can also be exploited.

She said “They’ve also been doing some interesting things, their game plan looks interesting. There are things that we have to be mindful of but they also have areas to exploit that we are working on. We want to make sure that what we show is a performance that is closer to what we did in the first two games.”

Leicester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Aston Villa kicks-off at 2pm on Sunday afternoon.