Brighton & Hove Albion striker Ini Umotong believes the team learned a lot about themselves in yesterday’s FA Women’s Super League defeat against Chelsea.
Albion were undone by two first-half goals, but went on to put in a much-improved display in the second half and Umotong dicussed the challenges of playing away at the current title holders.
She said, “Going into the game, we knew it was going to be tough. Chelsea are the champions and on their home turf, we always knew it was going to be a challenge.
“In the first half I don’t think we really found our feet and they came at us hard. In the second half it was a different game, I feel as though we were on the front foot and we created a lot more and had better chances than they did.”
The Nigeria international also paid testament to Hope Powell’s team talk at half-time and said that the players went into the second half playing without any pressure on them.
“Hope reinstalled the belief that we should have in ourselves. She took a bit of the pressure off us and let us go out and play our own game.
“We got a lot of confidence from her, so when we got back out on the pitch we knew we could play better and go at them rather than try to defend against them.”
Umotong then looked ahead to the team’s next match against Everton where she thinks the team can implement the lessons learned in the match against Chelsea.
“There’s a lot of positives from this match that we can take into the next game. We’re creating opportunities, so for us to improve, we need to finish them off.
“The chances we created against Chelsea are ones we didn’t really create in other games, so we’re getting better and better in each match.
“We took the game to Chelsea and if we can do that against Everton in the next match, then we can push for the win.
“What we’ve learned from the match against Chelsea will stand us in good stead going forward, so we all want to prove that on the pitch.”