WSL Full-Time
·3 December 2022
WSL Full-Time
·3 December 2022
The hosts have won six of their seven matches in this season’s Barclays Women’s Super League while Aston Villa are in the unfamiliar position of fifth after enjoying an excellent start themselves.
Aston Villa will play in front of a near-40,000 crowd for the first time at women’s team level this afternoon and head coach Carla Ward says that The Villans need to play the game and not think about the occasion.
“I don’t think anybody that hasn’t played in front of 30,000-40,000 people ever really knows (how to cope with the crowd) until they do,” Ward said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “We’ve got to do our best to treat it as a game of football and not the occasion.
“We’ve got a lot of experienced players in our camp that have played in big games, different countries and I think that we are going to have to massively utilise them. These players have got to look after each other out there, play it as another game of football but enjoy it at the same time.”
Aston Villa are aiming to win three matches on the spin for the very first time in the Barclays Women’s Super League. Ward went on to say that there is no pressure on her side, all of the pressure and expectancy is on Manchester United.
She said “What a place to do it (win three consecutive league games). We’ve got to go there and have a go, that’s the reality of it. The only pressure on us is the pressure that we put on ourselves, the pressure is on them. Can we go and make it three wins on the bounce? We will see.
“It is really important that we go there and give the very best versions of ourselves. There has been quite a lot of noise this week but what I would say is that our focus has to be on the game and the game only.”
Aston Villa’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Manchester United kicks-off at 12.30pm.
Live