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Aston Villa head coach Natalia Arroyo says that her side will go to Crystal Palace with ambition rather than worrying about league rankings.
The Villans are just four points above bottom side Crystal Palace in the Barclays Women’s Super League table. This weekend’s fixture in Sutton is a game that Aston Villa cannot afford to lose.
When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Aston Villa boss Arroyo said that her side are going to the VBS Community Stadium to win rather than worry about the league standings.
“We are going into this game with ambition,” Arroyo said. “We want to win, we want to get three points and it’ll be very important for us in making the gap a bit bigger. We are focusing on our growth as a team without having the pressure of worrying about being close to them.”
Aston Villa have failed to score in their last three matches but Arroyo says that her side’s preparation has remained the same this week and she wants them to keep carving out chances.
She said “We have been trying to work on being more solid because we have been conceding a lot of goals and it’s not allowing us to get into games. In this last week, we’ve also looked at some of our in-possession work.
“We haven’t done anything different this week. We want to be better and find more solutions as a team. We know that we are struggling sometimes with taking chances, we have failed to benefit from the big chances that we have had.
“We have to keep trying to have more chances and believe that the ball will go into the net at some point.”
Aston Villa are yet to win on the road this season. Arroyo sees no reason why The Villans can’t become a force away from Villa Park and she is calling for consistency from her side.
She said “A good team needs to perform well home and away. There are no excuses, when we go away to other stadiums, we need to perform as good as possible.
“There are differences such as different pitch dimensions, the opposition’s skills and they can change the way that they play. From my experiences in Spain, depending on the pitch, teams could press higher or play more long balls but I don’t see that here, so there are no excuses, we need to perform well.
“The best teams are able to take three points when they play home and away. We need to be as strong as they are if we want to be higher in the future and it starts on Sunday. We will play as aggressive and as positively as we can.”
Aston Villa’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Crystal Palace kicks-off at 2pm on Sunday afternoon.
