Becky Lyon, Features

Lyon: The girls worked so hard

Published by Gillingham Ladies Media on November 30, 2011

Becky Lyon was proud of her team’s efforts and their performance in the win over West Ham Ladies Reserves on Sunday afternoon.

Amy Taylor came off the bench in the second half to score the only goal of the game and help bring the three points back to Kent.

Talking about the match, Bex said: “Three points is three points and both the girls and I were absolutely delighted to take three points away from there.

“To be fair the whole game was pretty scrappy and the wind was really strong so one end you had the wind going against you and the other you had the sun in your eyes. We dug deep and got the three points, it took a while for us to settle in but they played some good football and I was please with them. I was quite impressed with some of the football that we did play, it was good.”

Bex was full of praise for all of the players including the sums like Amy Taylor who came on and netted the all important goal.

She added: “Whenever she plays for us to be fair she always seems to score, I took Kirsty off to put Amy on. Kirsty had an outstanding game and position wise she is always and switched on and knows exactly where she should be.

“Putting Amy Taylor on there she did the job and scored a goal, it is her third in two games so she did really well. She seems to just have an endless amount of energy so it worked really well. All the girls across the pitch worked so hard.

“We have been working hard on if one person is closing the ball down then the other closes off the options, and on Sunday every single player did that. It was really nice for me to see that they took what we worked on in training into the match.

“Sunday was the first time that I was able to use three subs and although I want to keep the starting eleven the same, if we have three people on the bench I will always want to get them on. I think working on things in training is what we need to do, we need to look at the things that go wrong on a Sunday take them into training and then take what we have worked on the next week.

“The Reserve girls are there at training week in week out, you will always get 13 or 14 players there, and it is good to know what they are learning on a Thursday they are taking into games. I am learning in every game, and I take my hat off to West Ham because they made it really hard for us because every time we were attacking everything seemed to go right for them in the game.

“Amy Taylor’s goal I was about to start screaming at Temi for not following it in and it hit the post and went in. With Gills luck nine times out of ten that would have hit the post and come out but it hit the post and went in, so maybe someone is looking down on us.

“Once again though the back four were rock solid, Jess was unbelievable in goal and the team just worked so hard for each other.”

The Gills are now joint 5th with West Ham in what is one of the tightest Leagues ever and there is still everything to play for, something Bex is looking forward to.

She said: “It is so tight, before the game we were second bottom with seven points and just by winning we are joint 5th, the table is so tight.

“Bristol and Arsenal are not that far ahead of us, you expect them to be steaming ahead but they are not. I don’t expect us to be in the top two at all but we have the chance to push up now and we have some tough games coming up. I have every faith in the girls that they will pick up points and do everything they can to win the matches. “

Watford are next up for the Reserves and Bex is confident that her side can get something out of the game, just as they did in the away League game.

She added: “Watford was my second game in charge, it was really tough and it was the first time I had seen team spirit like that. I am hoping again that they show that again this weekend, we know how they play and again I have a good starting eleven and a strong bench.

“I am going to be looking for the three points and I know the girls go out there to get the three points every week. Hopefully, we will have better preparation that we did on Sunday when I had players turning up on Sunday twenty minutes before kick-off due to an accident.

“I think that just goes to show so much about the mentality of these girls that they can turn up twenty minutes before kickoff go and win the game. It is so refreshing to see with these girls they are so up for it and they work so hard for each other.”