Renée: “We wanted to be more clinical”

Following last weekend’s 0-0 draw against Crystal Palace, the objective against Manchester United was clear: convert more of our chances.

We were only able to do that on one late occasion in Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Emirates Stadium though, with our head coach left wanted the side to become more clinical.

“I think there was domination on the pitch, I think in the first half they spent more time on the ball than we would have wanted, so we got more aggressive in the second half,” Renée Slegers said. “I think they have very little opportunities. Of course, the chance that they get is a very open chance, which they capitalised on.

“I think going into the game we wanted to be more clinical, we wanted to be ruthless with our opportunities in the box, but unfortunately we couldn't convert the dominance in the final third into goals today.

“From a mentality perspective, what the players did at the end of the game, with the energy and the ideas of the five game changers that come on, that's definitely something we're going to take with us. It gives us belief that we can do things late in the game, but of course we wanted three points today.”

Smilla Holmberg was one of those game changers, getting in an advanced position on the right to bury Leah Williamson’s 95th-minute cross, but naturally the boss wants more goals to show for our chance creation.

“I think we have our box entries, we have our shots and there’s quite some that go on target,” she said. “We just have to continue to work on being more dangerous in front of goal and that's a collective responsibility. That's something we do together, of course, because we really believe in the quality of the squad, the qualities of the players.

“We believe that if those final details are going to be there and things start clicking, we're going to be good.”

We have a period of big games coming up, starting with Tuesday’s UEFA Women’s Champions League opener against HB Koge in Borehamwood.

“Recover now and then a couple of days to work towards Koge,” Renée added. “I think that's good for us. Of course, we're going to be reviewing this performance and take all the learnings so we're effective with our training week.

“Then we look forward to being in front of the fans again because what they did for us today, I said the five game changers, but also the crowd here helping us towards that goal, that was amazing. We really want to pay back to the fans and let's start on Tuesday.”