Melbourne City might be top of the table, but there’s still a lot to improve on according to Women’s Head Coach, Michael Matricciani.
In his pre-match press conference, the manager spoke of his delight for the returning Holly McNamara.
City will look to maintain their unbeaten start to the season when they host Canberra United at AAMI Park on Sunday night.
Read his pre-match thoughts below…
SHE’S BACK
“She’s [Holly McNamara] been working extremely hard the last three months that I’ve been in charge, she’s been doing all the right things working with our medical team and they’re doing an amazing job with her and the squad in general to be honest.
“Probably the last five, six weeks, she’s started integrating into full team training and contact. She played last week in the bye for us, we had an internal match against U15 Boys, she played 30 minutes there and pulled up really well.
“We’re very confident and we think that this is the right time to put her in and depending on the match and how that plays out, how many minutes she gets, it’s great to have her at least available.
The most important thing for her is that she’s feeling confident in her body, the rest, she’s going to take time to get back to 100% and her best but we’re willing to push that, we’re not putting too much pressure on her – I just want her to go out and enjoy her football, that’s the most important thing.”
RETURNING MATILDAS
“We have almost a fully fit squad, there’s probably about 19 players up for selection this week, which is a good headache for me to have. We have a very strong squad, very proud of the girls that went away on international duty and represented Australia very proudly – a couple scored too which is great, hopefully they bring that goalscoring form back to us as well.
“We also had TJ who went and represented Serbia that unfortunately lost to Sweden who are a world-class side in their Euro qualifiers – so she’s back now with us, ready for this week as well. A lot of headaches for me as the Head Coach, but good headaches.”
ALWAYS IMPROVING
“I think we’ve been consistently improving in our attacking third. From the beginning of the season, from Perth to just now with the Wanderers, for me, I’m seeing better movements, better combinations, timing of the runs are getting better and I don’t think we’re anywhere near our best.
“I think there’s still a lot of work to be done and we’re doing a lot of reviews of our training and our matches to try and get better in that front third. I think defensively, we have a lot of room for improvement as well so we did get our first clean sheet, they had a couple of big moments which I think could’ve been prevented… there’s always areas of our game we want to improve on.”
