THERE was an inevitability to Glasgow City’s defeat against Wolfsburg on Friday night, even if the 9-1 scoreline was not what head coach Scott Booth and his players would have expected. An already uneven contest was made markedly more so by the pandemic.
The disappointing aspect of the Champions League quarter- final was the nature of some of the goals conceded, even allowing for City’s obvious lack of match fitness. Wolfsburg, orchestrated by four-goal Pernille Harder and Svenja Huth, took full advantage.
Their head coach, Stephan Lerch, had said before the tie that he and his staff couldn’t carry out their usual meticulous analysis of the opposition because so much had changed since the start of the year. He would, however, have noted the goals City conceded in the 4-0 friendly defeat to Manchester United a fortnight ago.
Despite the loss, there was a terrific strike for Lauren Wade on her Champions League debut. The left-sided player also impressed when Northern Ireland lost 2-1 to Scotland in the Pinatar Cup in March.
“Lauren worked incredibly hard and showed little signs she can be dangerous,” Booth said. “We’ve been trying to make sure she gets forward into these positions to have a strike at goal because she’s got a sweet left foot.”
The defeat was City’s second heaviest in Europe, eclipsed only by the 10-0 away loss to Turbine Potsdam in November 2011. Lee Alexander, Leanne Ross and Jo Love also played on that occasion – as did Rachel Corse, Emma Mitchell, Lisa Evans and Jane Ross.
PLENTY of good news on the domestic front with the 2020-21 fixtures announced on Friday and contact training permitted from tomorrow.
As expected, the Scottish Building Society SWPL season starting on October 18 will have almost the same schedule of fixtures as the null and void 2020 one. There is presumably also the prospect that BBC Alba will again select Celtic versus Glasgow City to jump start the season two nights earlier – in which case we can only pray the weather on October 16 is considerably better than it was on February 21.
The further cause for cheer is that spectators look set to be allowed back inside grounds, albeit with protocols in place, by the time the season starts in two months’ time.
HEARTS will again travel to Rangers for their opening SWPL1 game, but there is still no confirmation that Andy Kirk will replace Kevin Murphy as first-team manager. An announcement was expected three weeks ago, and despite the silence remains likely to happen.
To be fair to the club they have been fire-fighting almost continuously in the wake of the SPFL decision to relegate their men’s team – followed by the bizarre pause in training which also impacted them.
Relegation could be an issue for their women’s team as well in the forthcoming season. Kirk has spent his career in the men’s game, so will need to get up to speed quickly while inheriting a squad that has lost some key players. They include Lisa Swanson, who can no longer commit to four-hour round trips from Ayrshire. The former Rangers player is expected to find a club closer to home, while Scotland Under-19 forward Aisha Maughan has moved to Virginia to take up a scholarship.
IT has been an eventful August for Aberdeen manager Emma Hunter. She returned from furlough at the start of the month – at the very time her club was having to deal with protocol breaches by eight men’s first-team players. No sooner had that affair died down than the city was put into lockdown as a consequence of increased Covid-19 cases. It remains under that Scottish Government edict.
“What happened with the men’s team hasn’t affected us in terms of getting back to Cormack Park,” Hunter reported. “The club has really good protocols within the training facilities – they couldn’t be any more stringent – but you can’t control what goes on outside.
“It’s the local lockdown which has had the biggest impact. Other clubs were stopped from social-distance training as well, so we haven’t lost too much ground, but we’re expecting a decision from Nicola Sturgeon very soon. If she lifts the lockdown we could get back to training. If she doesn’t, then unfortunately we can’t. It has been really frustrating, but the announcement of the fixtures on Friday gave us a sense of light at the end of the tunnel and something to focus on.”
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