WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARRIS – LCL find a sub-way v Palace

Two teams, both alike in dignity, in fair Sutton met one chilly September night. And in many ways, this was a barometer of exactly how things stand between the WSL and WSL2, as Crystal Palace have just been relegated to WSL2 and London City Lionesses have just been promoted to the WSL. As the only journo standing on the final whistle, Helen M Jerome was also able to speak to both head coaches exclusively and gauge their opinions.

Crystal Palace 1 London City Lionesses 2 was the final score in Sutton’s VBS Community Stadium in this first round Subway League Cup tie, but that only tells part of the story. The match was almost entirely transitional, with Palace easily the best team in the first half. The Eagles were deservedly 1-0 up at half-time, thanks to the magical left foot of Ashleigh Weerden, who whipped in a shot/cross that flew into the top right of Emily Orman’s goal.

But LCL had an incredible array of talent on the bench, and their first change after half-time, Lucia Alvarez, flew down the wing and crossed for Sanni Franssi to equalise when it fell to her, just seconds after the restart. Game on.

Then came the big guns for London City. Off the bench stepped Maria Perez, Gesa Marashi and, crucially, Nikita Parris (bottom, left). LCL were going for it, pouring forward at every opportunity and often leaving just a couple of defenders in their own half, with Alanna Kennedy joined by Italian international Elena Linari (bottom, right), again off the bench. Palace threw on their own subs in reply, including recently-signed Ruesha Littlejohn, but the new LCL strike-force pressed them back repeatedly and the bar and post were pinged several times.

When the ball arrived at the feet of Nikita Parris, the ultimate goal-poacher, she had a tap-in at the far post to secure the 2-1 victory. Not that this was the final action, as Palace thought they’d equalised more than once, with the ball adjudged not to have crossed the line, followed by a high cross from a corner that looked like dipping in, but was also ruled out.

Just one goal separated Jo Potter’s Palace from Jocelyn Prêcheur’s London City on the final whistle, which shows the narrow margins between both leagues. The quality and confidence of both sides might also reflect that they’d each secured their first league wins of the season the previous weekend. So it was fascinating to hear what each head coach had learned from their players and the game itself.

FIRST I spoke to Jo Potter, Palace’s new head coach, who has moved down south to Crystal Palace from Glasgow Rangers in the Scottish League.

So how are you finding it now you’ve moved down here?

Jo Potter: Yeah, really good. You know, a different league, a league that’s moved on and progressed since I last left.

But it’s great to see. I think you can see the quality and how much the league’s moved forward and how much more difficult the league is to participate in and get out of, which is great to see.

I think it shows on the pitch and off the pitch with the support that everybody’s got.

It’s going far and long may it continue.

Could you learn much from a match like this where it was very much a game of two halves? You had the upper hand first half and they then brought on their supersubs.

Yeah, I mean they did. But we still had a goal disallowed, and we still hit the bar.

Did you think it looked like it went over the line?

I’m not sure, you know, it’s hard for us to see where we are, but you know the ref said to me that our player was pinning the goalkeeper on the one that went straight from the corner. But I didn’t even think we had anybody on the keeper at that point, so we’ll have to look back and see.

I looked at their goal, and for me, it looked like it was an off-side on the through ball, but you don’t really get that rub of the green when you’re the team that’s fighting.

But I think we’ve showed a lot of promising moments tonight, a really promising performance.

We look defensively strong and look like scoring many, many goals, and creating many chances.

You can see we’re coming into our own. It was always going to take time, but we’ve got a lot to take from tonight and we’ll definitely try and take that into Sunday.

So it’s just like small cues for everyone I think.

If I can pick out a couple of players. Ashleigh Weerden’s goal was amazing.

Oh yeah it was, it was very good.

We work on a lot of things and we highlight a lot of areas of weaknesses that the opposition can have, because I think it’s important that we work on ourselves and what we can do to hurt opponents – as opposed to just what their strengths are.

So we looked at getting the ball into wide areas and delivering the ball into the box, because we know they’re not particularly great at it and that’s how they’ve conceded a lot of their goals.

You could see that came out in our play a lot tonight, and I thought we were excellent at it.

The goal was definitely deserved, and I thought we could have had another couple as well.

Justine Vanhaevermaet (below, centre) was outstanding as well. I reckon it’s almost like having two players with her!

Yes, you know what? That’s why we brought her in!

I think the partnership that her and Blanchard have at the moment is really, really good.

You can see it’s flourishing. They’re bringing out the best of each other.

We’ve found a different side to Blanchard’s game that’s never really been there. And I thought they were both excellent in and out of possession tonight.

How do you feel about the rest of the season now?

It’s a long old season, but it’s really promising.

Each game is very, very difficult. There’s no easy game in this league.

But I think we’ve showed that we can go toe-to-toe with the best in the next league. And we’ve got to take a lot of promise from that and and keep pushing and go in a game at a time.

THEN I spoke at length with the London City Lionesses head coach, Jocelyn Prêcheur about his view of the match – and their upcoming clash with Man City in the WSL.

How much do you enjoy this kind of match?

Jocelyn Prêcheur: First, it’s always a good opportunity for us to practice, to keep improving, to build our game.

We play a very good team, Palace, in perfect condition.

So it’s really important for us, especially at this moment, to take this opportunity, take the chance for some players also to prove they can be part in this project.

Of course for us it was a very interesting game, very challenging of course, but it was an important game for us.

What can you learn from this kind of game?

We need to be more conquering, I think the first half we were too shy.

I told the girls we need to impose our rhythm.

We really we play too slow the first half, impossible to find the space if we don’t increase the speed of the ball.

And the way they responded in the second half was so much better in terms of intensity.

So we really need to adapt to the rhythm, adapt to the speed. We cannot come back to the speed we play last season.

Now it’s about keeping this evolution. And it was so much better at the second half. At least in terms of intensity.

It was a game of two halves, with Palace better in the first half and you in the second half, with your substitutes?

Of course, Palace of course made a good game. We expected a good game as usual and as usual we are not disappointed on that point.

I really want to congratulate them because it was very tough.

And yeah, we made some subs, of course, in the second half, but it’s also something we did the last two games.

All the players who came in really made a difference in this game.

It was already the case tonight, so it’s good in terms of dynamic and of building a group, building a team, and we will need everyone.

But I think we really could have done better with the players on the pitch in the first half.

This is my only regret tonight.

You had your first league win last weekend, how does that feel? Can you build on that?

Yeah, absolutely. When you build, when you really want to develop a team, each time you win, it give you confidence, it gives you the energy you need to evolve faster.

So, of course, it was so important. Also to encourage the players to keep working hard, because I really want to underline that everyone is really working hard.

I really like this cohesion we are creating at the moment, the energy I feel with everyone on but also off the pitch.

Maybe what we missed in the second half was some leaders on the pitch, but it’s also the job of the new players to take this leadership, because we had some experienced players who can play this role also when the captain (Asllani) is not there or when the experienced players are not there.

So, this is also another step we need to build. Some players are still adapting to this new environment, new team, new game project, new everything.

But as you said, many things we can build on last week and also tonight.

The main one is probably our capacity to stay organised and come back when you lose and at the end you change the game, you have this capacity to respond immediately, in the second half scoring, then keep pushing.

If we were a little more lucky tonight, I don’t remember exactly how many times we shoot on the post, on the crossbar, but if we are a little more lucky… I think we could have won this game a little earlier, but no.

We are keep developing and I really think we are on the good way.

Looking forward to the weekend, playing Man City, how do you feel about that?

The good point is we manage several players.

Because every time we need to, when I talk about adapting the intensity, we also need to give time to the players to adapt to this rhythm.

The recovery is hard. So it’s good to have a large group when I can use many, many players.

Most of them did the job tonight and they now give the opportunities to the others to focus on Man City.