BURTON Albion Ladies return to cup competition action on Sunday as they travel to Lye Town Ladies in the Birmingham Senior Cup.
Last time out the Brewers faced a tough test against West Bromwich Albion Women in the FA Women’s National League Plate but manager James Billings believes that there is a new found confidence within his side, even after their defeat last weekend.
“It’s not very often that you can lose 6-1, and the players are coming away with a little bit of a confidence boost from it,” Billings said.
“Obviously nobody wants to lose 6-1, but West Brom are a very good side and we’ve managed to take stuff out of it which we’re all happy about as coaches and players.
“I think you can almost see that when we have training the players' characters are back. They’re not shying away now; their heads aren’t down and they’re now trying to gee each other up which is what we want to see as coaches.”
Lye are currently midtable in the West Midlands Regional Women's Football League, but Brewers players Charlotte Jarvis and Natasha Rothery feel the team are full of confidence and have the ability to put in a strong showing against their opponents this weekend
“We’ve got a lot to go into the game with, they’re a league lower so it gives us a bit of an advantage but we need to use our strengths to overcome everything on the pitch and try and play our football, score goals, do what we do.
“On the training pitch it’s completely different, we look class out there but then when we’ve been going into games previously its looked like we didn’t even know each other. I feel like the West Brom game on Sunday was the best we’ve played all season.”
After seeing out his first two games in charge, Billings has seen his team start to play in the style that he wants to carry throughout the season.
“We’re trying to stop conceding goals and we’ve got a fair bit of pace in the side so we’re maybe trying to get some ideas across to team and during the second half last Sunday it started to show a bit.
“The players seem to be picking it up a little bit more each session and they’re taking bits out of the sessions and putting it into use during the games which is quite pleasing to see.
“The training just needs to be specific to the way we want to do things, and myself and the other coaches have started to notice that the stuff we’ve been practising is being applied within the game.”