London City Lionesses head coach Carolina Morace says that her side can improve the quality of their play in the final third following yesterday’s 1-0 defeat to Durham at Maiden Castle.
The Pride enjoyed plenty of attacking play in the North East but they struggled to severely test Naoisha McAloon in the Durham goal.
When speaking to WSL Full-Time after the match, London City Lionesses head coach Morace said that her side can improve when it comes to creating quality goalscoring opportunities.
“It was a difficult game because they came into it on the back of a big loss,” Morace said. “When a team suffers such a big loss, they will look to produce a huge reaction and we expected that.
“We tried to play our game in possession of the ball but playing on an artificial surface doesn’t help because the bounce is completely different. In the first half, we made many technical mistakes.
“We dominated the game but didn’t create many good chances. We had 11 shots in the second half and a lot of corners but we were unable to create some really dangerous situations and that is something that we have to work on.”
London City Lionesses have dropped points in consecutive games after conceding 96th-minute goals. Morace said that keeping morale high after suffering those late blows can be tough.
She said “It is difficult to keep players’ morale high when you drop points by conceding goals late in the game.
“We dominated this game and attacked all of the second half but we lost after conceding another goal in the last minute.
“It is difficult to lift the players from that, I am sorry for them and for the staff. We have to make sure that we don’t lose confidence from it and we have to do our jobs better.”
London City Lionesses now enter the international break. While some players will link-up with their respective nations, others will stay with the club and work hard on the training patch.
“The problem with the break is that we will lose many players,” Morace said.
“Because we started pre-season very late, I want to keep my players performing at the same physical level. We will use this time to build our physical condition and our style of play.
“I can see that there are some improvements to be made. Sometimes, we lose the ball cheaply, so we need to be more confident in retaining possession.”
London City Lionesses’ next fixture is against Charlton Athletic at Princes Park on Sunday 1 October 2023.