West Ham Women’s boss Rehanne Skinner had admitted her frustration following her sides loss to Bristol City at the weekend.

Our Hammers fell to a narrow 3-2 home loss to the Robins, with West Ham failing to take advantage of much dominance in the game, which understandably frustrated Skinner.

“I don’t think we took advantage of the opportunities to get into the final third as well as we should have,” the West Ham Women’s manager told the clubs Official Website. “That created some challenges in terms of the chances that we were able to create and we didn’t convert those into the chances that we wanted.

“Defensively, we’re disappointed with the goals that we have conceded, because we definitely could have prevented those in a number of areas before they ended up being goals.

“It was a positive that we came from behind and got the goal before the break. We tried to change things in the second half, we had finishers coming onto the pitch and changed the shape towards the end. I thought that helped us with creating more opportunities, but we weren’t really able to break them down as I would have liked.”

Skinner feels that her side are showing a lack of sternness in defence, and feels that if 3 goals are going to be conceded then you cannot expect to get a positive outcome.

“You can’t concede three goals in this league, that’s the bottom line,” added Skinner.

“Defensively, we have to be a lot more hard working and a lot more aggressive in one-on-one situations. You’ve got to be the best in both boxes in the game and we need to be better.

“It’s a work in progress, and we’re trying to improve week on week. There’s definitely lessons to be learned from today. But equally, every game we’ve played, there’s definitely things that we’re learning about the squad as we go along. Today has shown us the areas that we need to keep improving on.”

West Ham Women are away at Manchester United at the weekend, and Skinner wants to see a much more resolute display for that encounter from her side.

“We’re going to continue working really hard in terms of how we look after the ball and how we progress with the quality on the pitch,” added the boss. “We have to be able to use the ball with real purpose, and that’s something that we’re going to keep working on this week heading into Manchester United.

“But defensively, we’ll be back in the training ground, working as hard as we can so that we don’t concede goals. We’ve got to be really hard to beat up in Manchester next week.”