Manchester United head coach Marc Skinner says that he will do his very best to make Spanish full-back Ona Batlle an even better player.
The 22-year-old has just started her second campaign with The Red Devils. She was named the club’s Player of the Season for 2020/2021 while she netted her first goal for Manchester United in a 2-0 home win over Reading last weekend.
Manchester United head coach Skinner spoke to FAWSL Full-Time about Batlle in an official club press conference earlier today. He highlighted just how special the Spaniard is whilst promising to do his very best to develop her further.
“She’s phenomenal, Ona just has so many skills that it really is wonderful;” Skinner said. “She really is exciting, you see the goal (against Reading), I just need to see her do that consistently and want to do that more often, really take the opponents that way.
“She’s a wonderful, wonderful talent and I am going to do my best to help develop her growth and give her ideas of how she can grow. She’s a really wonderful player and has a lovely nature about her. She is a beautiful person and that’s really important as she grows as a player because of that.”
Batlle is one of several Manchester United players who can operate in a wide position and Skinner went on to say how pleased his is with the club’s options at full-back.
He added “The one thing that I will say since coming in is that the full-back areas are really strong here. Whether that’s Kirsty Smith, Martha (Harris) or whether that’s Hannah (Blundell) on the other side, we have really good flexibility so we can attack.
“Somebody said about our narrow shape, as we look at our opponents, we will adapt our shape around where we feel that we can best exploit them. What we do have is a fantastic outlet from both of our full-back areas.”
Having started the season by collecting three points last weekend, Manchester United will be looking to make it two wins out of two when they travel to The King Power for their next match against Leicester City on Sunday.