Aston Villa head coach Carla Ward is expecting a tough test from Leicester City this weekend, however, she sees the game as one in which her side can be successful.
The Villans and The Foxes are separated by just three points in the Barclays Women’s Super League table. Aston Villa are currently in seventh place while Leicester City are ninth.
When speaking to the media in the pre-match press conference, Aston Villa boss Ward highlighted the difficulty of the challenge but insisted that three points is a more than achievable target.
“It’s a game that we want to get maximum points from of course,” Ward said. “It’s a points game where we can try and get some points on the board.
“It won’t be easy. Yeah, they’ve lost a few but I know Jen [Foster] well, she was obviously one of my coaches when I was at Blues. She will have them organised for sure and we expect it to be a tough afternoon because they’ve had a fairly good season so far.”
Aston Villa managed just one shot on goal during last weekend’s 3-1 defeat to Arsenal at Villa Park. Ward hinted that her side will be going for goals this weekend, although she has no doubt that last weekend’s restricted opportunities were down to the high quality of the opposition.
She said “If we talk about the week before [against Everton], we created a lot and if we talk about this season, we’ve created an awful lot. We’ve maybe not had the best in terms of xG but we’ve created an awful lot, so let’s talk about the opponent which was Arsenal on the back of that defeat at Chelsea.
“We knew that they were going to come at us. At half-time, they were clearly hurting at being 1-0 down and we knew that they were going to throw the kitchen sink at us.
“Yes, going the other way is something that we spoke about at the start of the week. Hopefully, the way we line-up might reflect how we want to try and rectify that.”
Aston Villa’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Leicester City kicks-off at 12.30pm on Saturday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
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