Rachel Daly praises Aston Villa’s grit after scoring WSL winner at Leicester
Aston Villa’s match-winner, Rachel Daly, paid tribute to her team’s grit as they bounced back from their FA Cup disappointment to win at Leicester on their return to Women’s Super League action.
The England striker’s 16th-minute goal secured a 1-0 win at the Pirelli Stadium, but Villa had the full-back Sarah Mayling to thank for a late goalline clearance on a night when the keeper Daphne van Domselaar also shone.
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That proved the perfect response to last Saturday’s 3-0 cup defeat by Everton as a fourth win of the season eased Carla Ward’s side into seventh place in the table.
Asked by the club’s official X account to review her fifth league goal of the campaign, Daly said: “It was all right, to be fair. I’ll take that.
“Honestly though, what a performance from everyone. That’s character tonight. We knew we had to come and turn the game around from the performance last week, and that’s everyone, from the blocks on the line to the grit throughout the whole game. Obviously scoring a goal was nice, but what a win.”
Villa enjoyed the better of the first half and might have gone in at the break more than a single goal to the good. However, Leicester finished strongly and looked destined to snatch a point at the last only for Mayling to block the substitute Ava Baker’s goal-bound 87th-minute shot on the line.
The Leicester manager, Willie Kirk, whose ninth-placed side have not won a league game since October, admitted his team had to adopt a different mindset to the one that served them so well in last season’s successful fight to stay in the top flight.
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He told BBC Leicester: “We want to be a top-half team. People compare us to last year, but we’re not in last year, we want to feel the pressure. Last year, everyone had us relegated and it can be easy to deal with those pressures. But we’ve got to learn to live with the new expectations, and that comes with a mindset change.”