There are plenty of positive signs to hope for a good campaign

But can the West Ham Women win a cup? Milly Thomson hopes this’ll be the year we lift silverware

October 11, 2024 Milly Thomson Features, West Ham Women 0

General view at the West Ham United v Manchester City EPL match, at the London Stadium, London, UK on 16th September, 2023.

It has been a good start to the season for West Ham Women. Since the season started last month, and at the time of writing, we have played three games so far, two in the league and one in the league cup.

The league fixtures have been against Manchester United and Liverpool whilst we played Portsmouth in the League Cup. We needed a last-minute equaliser from Rico Ueki to ensure a share of the points against potential league champions Liverpool. This point was our first but after two very hard games against tough opposition, I’m happy with our start.

With the League Cup, a 6-2 hammering of Portsmouth puts us in a very nice position to make it out the groups and go far. The League Cup is one of the competitions that I hope we take seriously and make it into the latter rounds as we have the quality to do so.

Looking at our future games, we’ve got Everton away coming up this month. I believe we should be beating Everton, but it won’t be an easy game. Having said that, if we are trying to get into Europe this season these are the games that are a must win.

Manchester City away earlier this month was always going to be tricky, because if they don’t finish this season in first place, they will be second, so any point against them was always going to be a huge bonus. There have been two new signings that have really started the season well and these are, Kinga Smezik, who is our starting goalkeeper and Seraina Plubel. Both players were vital during our opening three games.

When we lost our captain Mackenzie Arnold in the summer, I was worried about finding a replacement goalkeeper to compete with her standards, but we have. Without Smezik in goal, we would have lost against Liverpool, she kept us in it throughout.

For Plubel, she has come on in both league games but really showed her quality when we played Portsmouth at home in the cup. Her creativity and pace are what we have been screaming out for during the last few seasons and we have finally got what we needed. Long may it continue.

After many changes to our squad over the transfers window, I believe we have started well, and I can see us really pushing for Europe this year and hopefully a trophy but the next month is vital for this to happen.