Birmingham City midfielder Jade Moore says that the club’s Adobe Women’s FA Cup fifth round tie at Leicester City is a good game to refocus following last weekend’s shock defeat at Watford.
The Blues’ seven-match winning league run was brought to an abrupt end by the Hertfordshire club who recorded a 2-0 victory at Grosvenor Vale.
Birmingham City’s focus now shifts to an Adobe Women’s FA Cup fifth round tie against top tier Leicester City. Midfielder Moore is looking forward to the game and believes that it offers an opportunity for the team to refocus on the challenge ahead.
“I love a cup game,” Moore said when speaking to WSL Full-Time. “Having won the FA Cup before and with Birmingham, it makes it that little bit more special.
“Obviously, you have to weigh up the competition versus the league status. I actually think that a cup game right now, coming back off a defeat, is a real good refocus for us. Playing a WSL side makes us really have to zone in, concentrate and get back to doing the basics really well which I think we lacked last week at Watford.
“As a refocus game and a bridging game back into the league, it’s perfect timing. Who doesn’t want to do well in the FA Cup? It’s a really special competition for the club.”
Birmingham City are one of five clubs challenging for promotion to the Barclays Women’s Super League this season. Despite the league title being the Blues’ number one target, Moore believes that a cup run could have a positive effect.
She said “I think a cup run for any club, wherever they’re at, is a good thing. Even if you’re at the bottom of the table, it gives you something to hope for and push on, there’s a monetary value for the club and it can springboard you on to better success.
“If you go out and put on a really good performance against a WSL side, what does that look like for next week’s game confidence-wise? For us, it will hopefully springboard us back onto the right path but then also, it gets people minutes, it’s another game under everyone’s belt and for me, better opposition always leads to a better performance.”
Birmingham City have an exciting vision for the future with plans for promotion and a return to the highest level of the women’s game. Moore has been impressed with what this weekend’s opponents Leicester City have achieved since their arrival in the Barclays Women’s Super League in 2021.
“Whenever a club gets promoted into the WSL, the first couple of years are always about surviving,” the midfielder said. “For Leicester, they’ve done that, they’ve survived. Now, they have someone involved [in Willie Kirk] that wants to build a brand of football and style of football that they want to go on and showcase week in, week out.
“For us at Birmingham as a club, what everyone behind-the-scenes wants that to look like is a very similar model. We want to get promoted, stay up there and survive and then there’s some crazy ambition that in the next five or 10 years, they want Champions League football. To get that, there are steps in process; we need to build the style of football to attract players and win games.
“Sometimes, the attractive football is what attracts and that’s what Leicester have tried to do in the right way because they’ve sustained their status and now, they are building for the future.”
Birmingham City’s Adobe Women’s FA Cup fifth round tie at Leicester City kicks-off at 12pm on Saturday afternoon.