Jess Ziu was delighted to be starting again after her ACL injury, but she strongly believes West Ham deserved to have walked away with all three points against Everton.
After being sidelined for over a year, it was brilliant to see Jess Ziu starting for the Hammers once again. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the result she would have hoped for on her return to the starting XI with the Women’s team narrowly losing 1-0 at home to Everton.
West Ham dominated much of the match but they just could not find the back of the net. This wasn’t helped by the familiar face of Courtney Brosnan playing a blinder, and Ziu could not hide her disappointment.
“It’s a tough one to take,” she confessed when speaking to the official site. “I do think the girls put a really good shift in, and we were able to create four or five clear cut chances.”
Despite being out injured for so long, the midfielder was critical of herself as she believes she should have been on the scoresheet. “One of those [chances] fell to myself and I should have put it away. So yeah, it’s quite hard to take the result knowing that we were the team that created the better opportunities and were on top.”
“That’s why we’re all hurting, because we all feel as though we deserved to come away with the win for the chances that we were able to make. But that’s football I guess, if you don’t take your chances, you’ll get punished in this league.”
The Ireland international admits “it’s a bittersweet moment” being back on the pitch after her horrific ACL injury but coming back to such an undeserved loss is a tough pill to swallow. “It would have been nice to have come away with a win,” she continued, “but it’s great to be back with the girls and get a start under my belt. “
“It’s been the biggest mental and physical battle that I’ve ever had, I’m only young but it has been so hard. Like I’ve said in other interviews, I had a really good support system around me and they’ve pushed me every day. I’m thankful that Rehanne gave me the opportunity to start today, and hopefully we can move on from this game.”
Our Irons desperately need to start picking up some points and there is no better opportunity to do that than this Sunday against Leicester, with the foxes being without a win in their last 7 WSL matches.
A win could see West Ham move up two crucial places which, more importantly, takes them out of the relegation zone. As we approach the halfway point in this campaign, nothing less than three points will suffice if they want to get out of this hole they’ve dug themselves. It won’t be easy but this season certainly is still salvageable, though that simply has to start now. Hopefully the return of Ziu will help the Hammers push in the right direction.
