England manager Sarina Wiegman has accepted that England’s finishing touch was missing as the Lionesses laboured to a 1-0 win over Haiti in their World Cup opener.
Georgia Stanway netted a first-half penalty to secure the victory but England now find themselves on a run of four straight games without a goal from open play, ramping up the pressure on Wiegman 12 months after she led England to Euros glory.
“We’re missing ruthlessness,” Wiegman conceded. “It’s easy to say, but what does that mean?
“Sometimes the connection with the cross, the timing of the cross, where the cross ends in the penalty box and connection in front of the goal. We were very close a couple of times to scoring, the defence was tough, we’ll keep trying and working on it and start tomorrow again.
“What we talk about is our style of play and our game plan against the opponent. I think Denmark will drop deep and start from a very organised defence. We needed to keep the ball moving quicker and have less touches. We want to move the ball better – the rotations on the side we did better in the second half. We needed to keep creating chances. We had lots of crosses- we need better quality there to make the chance of scoring even higher.”
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It was Alessia Russo who got the nod from Wiegman to start in attack, with the boss opting against using WSL top scorer Rachel Daly – her left-back from the Euros triumph – until the 76th minute of the game.
With England’s inefficiency in attack, some fans have called for Wiegman to turn to Daly or even the resurgent Bethany England going forward.
“It has been a very hard choice,” said Wiegman of her striker selection. “You all talk about Alessia and Rachel, but Bethany England is in form too.
“What they show in training sessions is really good. It has been hard. We looked at this last period, but also what they had done in competition. In the end I made a decision.”
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