Bristol City’s nine-match unbeaten run in all competitions came to an end at Manchester City last night but head coach Lauren Smith was full of praise for her players after coming so far in such a short period of time.
The Robins went down 3-1 at The Academy Stadium in an FA Women’s Continental League Cup quarter-final but Smith’s side were a credit to themselves over the course of the 90 minutes.
Following Bristol City’s relegation from the Barclays FA Women’s Super League in May, Smith took charge of the club in the summer and had to oversee a major rebuilding job with virtually a brand new squad being assembled. Reflecting on what she has seen from her players over the last three months during the club’s unbeaten run, Smith said that she sees a group of players who have a real desire to push on and achieve.
“We have learnt about the individuals and about their desires to move on and to see what’s next,” Smith told FAWSL Full-Time. “The whole purpose of this season is to develop a team, build a team and see where we can get to and over the last few months, wins and more importantly performances have allowed us to get to where we are and actually start to talk about being back in the WSL one day and sooner rather than later.
“What I have found is that we have got a group of players that are willing, able and have got the desire and ability to go and push on.
Smith went on to discuss the rapid transformation of the club’s fortunes with Bristol City fans now having a team which they can be really proud of. She again paid tribute to the players for the attitude which they have shown this season.
She said “We always said that we would know where we are by Christmas performance-wise but it came a lot earlier than that and it is because of the players. They are good people and they all want to learn and that is ultimately what we were looking for when we were doing a lot of the scouting in summer, it was more about the person and what they wanted to achieve, it was about players who want to do better.
“You can see in our performances that the players are always wanting more and I am just really pleased with that.”
The focus now turns back to FA Women’s Championship football for Bristol City and the challenge of closing the gap on the four sides above them in the table. With back-to-back home games against Charlton Athletic and Crystal Palace on the horizon, there is a lot for The Robins to look forward to.
“We’ve always talked about our stadium up at The Robins High Performance Centre as somewhere where we don’t want people to come and feel comfortable and use the quality pitch, the size of the pitch to our advantage as well,” Smith said. “To this point, we have done that, the only one where we have really slipped up was Durham.
“Certainly against Charlton, I hope that we can use the pitch to our advantage and move the ball around against them, really picking them off, and I think it is going to be even bigger against Palace because they play on 3G so it is very different. When we go there, it is different so we need to make sure that when they come and play on our grass pitch, we really take that and use that against them.”
Bristol City’s FA Women’s Championship fixture against Charlton Athletic kicks-off at 3pm on Sunday with tickets available to purchase by clicking here.