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Skinner: We needed more balls into the box
Marc Skinner reflected that Manchester United needed to adapt more to the challenges posed by West Ham and their Chigwell Construction Stadium in Wednesday’s frustrating WSL draw.
The Reds sought to adapt our usual game to better suit the specific environment of the venue, having recently been held to draws there in 2023/24 and 2024/25.
Asked post-match on BBC Three about what appeared to be a more direct approach, Skinner replied: “It was more to get into the final third to deliver.
Skinner frustrated but focused on moving forward
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“We said at half-time we didn’t do it anywhere near enough, because the ball in the box is where the chances came from,” he added, with Elisabeth Terland’s first-half header a notable example that forced a save from goalkeeper Kinga Szemik.
“We almost wanted this perfect goal on a pitch, and it was a challenge for both teams to play that style of football.”
The boss admitted it was hard for the players to let go, in the circumstances, of a desire to craft more refined and technical opportunities.
“We’re caught in this mentality of wanting to overplay. I get it, on big pitches you can create those fantastic spaces to overload and be really aggressive,” he reasoned in a separate interview with MUTV. “On pitches like this, that you don’t train on, you have to adapt your game.
“Maybe we look at whether we adapted enough. On a pitch like this, what space is there other than to attack it with a cross? Our players want to play, and I get that, but especially this pitch – every year – we have to do it a different way. We’ve got to learn from that.”
Lundkvist: We didn't get to our level
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LUNDKVIST: ‘THERE’S SO MUCH TO PLAY FOR’
Given that United did still have a few different sights of goal, disappointment was an obvious reaction to only come home from east London with a single point.
“We’re not happy at all. We came here to get the three points,” Hanna Lundkvist told MUTV off the back of her first time playing away at West Ham.
“We had some good chances. We could see that [defending crosses] was a weakness of theirs. [But] we have to put them in the net, we can’t just keep crossing and get nothing from it.”
With the race for Champions League qualification heating up between United, Chelsea and Arenal, and the quarter-finals of this year’s competition in a matter of days, it highlights just how much is still on the table in what remains of 2025/26.
“We know that we have so much to play for this season, still. So, learning from everything, using this frustration for Everton [our next game on Saturday] will be crucial,” Hanna said.