Women’s football round-up: Struggling Charlton and Crystal Palace both suffer Championship defeats
Charlie Estcourt is confident that Charlton will climb out of trouble in the FA Women’s Championship despite a 2-1 home reverse to fellow strugglers Blackburn on Sunday.
Estcourt had put the Addicks in front but Natasha Flint’s brace means Riteesh Mishra’s side are bottom of the table – although they have three games in hand of Crystal Palace, who are directly above them.
“I 100 per cent believe we’ll pull away from the bottom,” said Estcourt. “We’ve got a very talented side. We just need to sort out a couple of things to try and climb back up the table.
“It’s happened a few times this season. We need to go away and look at why things are changing in the second half, whether it’s down to us. Whatever it is we need to fix it, and we need to fix it soon.
“It’s always nice to score a goal but the team is more important – I would have much rather had the three points.
“It’s been a long time since we last played but I don’t think that’s the reason why we lost. We can’t blame it on that.”
Crystal Palace also could not make home advantage count as they were defeated 3-1 by Leicester.
Amber Stobbs had levelled the match just after the break.
Palace manager Dean Davenport said: “I’m disappointed to be honest. We’ve been playing relatively well over the last couple of weeks, we’ve changed the way we play and have been trying to get the ball forward a little bit quicker but we need to stop the run we’re in.
“They scored an early goal which came by our own fault and we should have done a lot better. We scored the equaliser but for some reason we gave the impetus back to them which is the wrong thing to do.
“They’ve got loads of pace and loads of quality and we just couldn’t deal with it. We huffed and puffed but at the end of the day, the better side probably won. We created loads of chances – it’s about time we started finishing them.
“We knew they were going to hurt us at some stage but we’ve just got to remain positive and keep working on the training pitch to get it right.”
Charlton go to leaders Aston Villa on February 2 with Crystal Palace heading to second-placed Sheffield United.
First the Addicks host Chelsea in the FA Cup on Sunday.
To follow the action, buy tickets and sign-up for The FA Player’s live Barclays FA Women’s Super League coverage visit womenscompetitions.thefa.com
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