Southampton head coach Remi Allen expressed her disappointment at her team’s performance in their 1-1 draw with Bristol City, but praised the their resilience in grinding out a point.
The Saints faced The Robins at St Mary’s Stadium in their first match of the new Barclays Women’s Championship season yesterday afternoon. Aimee Palmer broke the deadlock for the hosts with a debut goal but managerless Bristol City fought back with Lexi Lloyd-Smith netting against her former club.
Reflecting on her side’s opening day draw, Southampton boss Allen admitted that the performance was well below par but the point gained could prove to be valuable come the business end of the season.
“Pleased we got the draw; do I think we deserved it? Probably not,” Allen said in the post-match media huddle. “Definitely got to improve on our performance, but I’m proud of the girls for grinding it out and getting a point.
“I think we were slow, we were sluggish in the first half. We needed an injection, an energy, an intensity. There was a couple of tweaks from a tactical point of view. I think there was a reaction for the first 10 minutes [of the second half] and then I felt like we ended up going back to how we were playing in the first half.
“It was so disappointing in terms of performance, but character and resilience is massive. A point on the board in the first game of the season against a top side could be massive come the end of the season, so we’ve got to take the positives from it.”
Going on to discuss Bristol City, Allen said that The Robins could potentially be one of the hardest teams that her side will face this season.
She said “They played in the WSL. Yes, they’ve come back down, but they’ve got top players. Loren [Dykes] has done an incredible job in the interim, so I’m proud of the players for grinding out the point.
“There’ll be some really hard games in this league. There’s probably five or six [teams] pushing for promotion, but these are the club that they are for a reason.”
After being appointed Southampton head coach in the summer, Allen stated that she wanted to play possession-based games and be more attacking, however, The Saints boss didn’t see enough of that style against Bristol City.
She said “I think we were sloppy in possession. I think at times, it wasn’t through Bristol being really aggressive and pressing us, we were just really sloppy and loose on the ball.
“There’s an element of first game nerves that we probably needed to get out of our system, but our technical ability is far better than what we’ve shown today. I’m positive that moving forward, that will become better.”
Southampton return to action on Sunday when they travel to The Eppleton Colliery Welfare Ground to face Sunderland.
