Everton manager Brian Sørensen says that his side will need to be at their very best when they face Barclays Women’s Super League champions Chelsea this weekend.
The Blue Girls take on the South West Londoners at Goodison Park on Sunday evening.
When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Everton boss Sørensen highlighted the quality in the Chelsea squad and said that his side must be on top form to get a result.
“They’ve got an unbelievable squad with quality players regardless of the line-up,” Sørensen said.
“Sonia [Bompastor] couldn’t have started much better in terms of results. I still think they maybe need to improve in some parts of the game but when you’re winning, there’s not much to complain about.
“It’s going to be a big ask for us but that’s the way it is. We will have to be ready and we will be. We will do our best to try and grind out a result.”
Everton have been known to play aggressive football against the top teams and Sørensen wants that theme to continue. He doesn’t want his side to have to defend deep.
He said “We need to be at our best defensively. We have had a bad habit, maybe not against the top sides, where we have let a goal in inside the first 10-15 minutes and we don’t want to do that against Chelsea.
“Defensively, we are always super-solid, we never give away many chances and that needs to be the same against Chelsea.
“We will go out, try to press in the areas that we can do that. We don’t want to be defending in and around our box too much because that’s the quality of Chelsea. We have to be at our very best like we were at the Emirates. I will set the team up to go out and win, see if we have a chance of creating something on Sunday.”
Everton have scored just once in their opening five Barclays Women’s Super League matches but Sørensen is happy with his side’s efforts when creating goalscoring opportunities.
He said “Last year, we were really struggling to create opportunities but this year, the attacking statistics are much higher. We are getting into the [goalscoring] situations.
“We need to keep working to get better [at converting chances]. We have the players in the squad to do it but we are also missing quality with the players that are out.”
Everton’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Chelsea kicks-off at 6.45pm on Sunday evening. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
