Simon Wood makes ‘silly’ admission as Leeds United Women eliminated from National League Cup
Simon Wood acknowledged that Leeds United Women need to start cutting out “silly mistakes” if they are to take the next step after being eliminated from the Women’s National League Cup.
Leeds went down 4-3 to Halifax FC Women on Sunday (29 October) – a team ranked a division higher than them – as their cup campaign came to an end at the first hurdle.
The hosts found themselves four goals behind early in the second period at Bannister Prentice Stadium, but they showed good fighting spirit to push their opponents all the way.
Reflecting on the first-round defeat, manager Wood told LUTV [29 October, 1m 7s]: “What we’ve got to do is go out and try to find that spark from the start of a game and cut out the silly mistakes.
“We’ve talked about it for a few weeks, but if we cut out the silly mistakes and go with that fire we can find within ourselves then we’ll give ourselves an opportunity to compete.”
Learn from it
Halifax are a division higher than Leeds and that told with a little over half the game played as the visitors were cruising at 4-0 up.
But full credit to the Whites as, rather than feel sorry for themselves, they rallied and somehow made a contest of it.
Scoring goals certainly has not been an issue for Wood’s side this season, having now netted 33 goals in 12 matches.
However, they have kept a clean sheet in just two of those 12 matches and have conceded 10 times in their past four outings in all competitions.
As Wood says, if they can cut out the errors and make themselves more solid at the back then they will be a real force.
After a couple of cup games, focus now turns back to league matters when United make the short trip to Barnsley next weekend.
Let’s hope that Wood’s side can learn lessons from the Halifax defeat and produce an error-free showing against their Yorkshire rivals.
In other Leeds United news, Graham Smyth has shared what Willy Gnonto did immediately after the full-time whistle in the men’s side’s win against Huddersfield Town.