Aston Villa must move on from midweek success as they face ‘super-dangerous’ West Ham says Arroyo | OneFootball

Aston Villa head coach Natalia Arroyo says that her side must move on from celebrating their midweek success against Arsenal with a tricky game against West Ham United now on the horizon.

The Villans travel to The Chigwell Construction Stadium to face The Hammers this afternoon. The game comes just four days after Aston Villa recorded an impressive 5-2 victory over UEFA Women’s Champions League finalists Arsenal at Villa Park.

When speaking to WSL Full-Time ahead of the trip to West Ham United, Aston Villa boss Arroyo said that her side need to strike a balance in celebrating the successes of their midweek victory and preparing for an incredibly tough game on the road.

“Emotions are still high, it was a big win against a top opponent,” Arroyo said. “We scored a lot of goals and had fun. We are enjoying this moment.

“We need to find the balance of enjoying that good performance, looking back at some of the big moments of that win and focusing on what will be needed for West Ham.

“It’ll be a different game, they are also in a good run of form; they’re winning, they’re scoring goals and are super-dangerous. We need to be really focused because if we go there still celebrating the win against Arsenal, we will have big problems.”

Six different players have got their names on the scoresheet for Aston Villa in their last two games and Arroyo believes that her side have the ability to find the back of the net via many different sources.

She said “It makes us stronger as a team that we don’t only depend on one or two players [to score goals]. We are understanding that we need to defend together and attack together.

“We have pace in different players and different players can join counter-attacks to try and help us score. It’s good that not only our wingers and forwards can score. We can score set-piece goals with centre-backs and there are [attacking] actions from the midfield. It makes us feel stronger and it shares the joy; it’s not always the same player celebrating, so it’s nice.”

Latest opponents West Ham United are also enjoying a deadly streak in-front of the opposition goal having netted seven times against Crystal Palace last time out. Arroyo says that her side will need to be smart in and out of possession in East London.

She said “Both teams are strong on the counter-attack, so let’s see who can manage the in-possession phase better. Let’s also see how strong we can defend, how smart we can be after a good team performance out of possession [against Arsenal] where we forced them to make mistakes that we needed to counter-attack.

“We know that when we have the ball, we need to be patient. We need to find the best positions and try to find the balance in wanting to hurt them with every chance that we have and being patient, playing slow sometimes, playing long sometimes. I think management of the rhythms will be key.

“Let’s see if we can suffer like the ways that we did against Arsenal and take something after suffering together. It’d be good to celebrate scoring an early goal, that would help. We will try to avoid falling behind because that then makes it tough. We need to play to hurt them but be smart.”

Aston Villa’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at West Ham United kicks-off at 3pm.