Alexia Putellas is “under a lot of pressure”, says Maestre | OneFootball

Two-time Ballon d’Or winner, Alexia Putellas, is yet to score for London City Lionesses since joining the club in the summer, and has registered one assist in last weekend’s game against Charlton Athletic.

“When you are very used to playing in one way, like Barcelona does, sometimes adapting to other environments where the teammates are different, the idea or the culture or the background of the other players are completely different, it takes time,” said head coach Eder Maestre.

“We are moving forward in terms of finding her in the [final third] of the pitch, that is something that we are trying to reach more. But I’m happy with that and we don’t need to rush with this situation because she is under a lot of pressure.”

Competition for places in the London City attack is strong. 23-year-old Isobel Goodwin scored a brace last Saturday against Charlton, and French international Kadidiatou Diani scored on her return from injury in the midweek League Cup match against Leicester City. Maestre confirmed Diani is fit to start against Brighton.

He said: “She is very talented and we know that she is going to be a kind of player that needs to make a difference. I was very pleased watching her scoring, and I hope she can score in the future.”

Brighton are an attacking-minded team, like London City, who will bring a new challenge to the Spanish coach.

“It’s gonna be a very tough game in terms of tactical possibilities and we recognise how Brighton is improving every match they are playing,” he said.

Maestre knows Brighton’s coach, Arturo Ruiz, from his time at Tenerife, when Ruiz was managing Granada in Liga F. “He’s a young and very talented coach. Spanish coaches are used to having a strong tactical vision of football and the way to recommend and use the space in that positional based game.”

He said London City will need to be “prepared to neutralise everything” as Brighton are “a very unpredictable team.”

“They are very aggressive on the ball, very clinical in the way they exploit the spaces in behind when they recover.

“They have very strong individuals, mostly with [Kiko] Seike on the right side and [Fran] Kirby moving between the lines. Maisie Symonds is a very strong centre midfielder. She is able to look far to put these balls to the runners in behind, and on the left side they have Manuela Vanegas as a centre back that I know very well because we were working together at Real Sociedad.”

Maestre is not worried about his team’s first defeat of the season (2-1 away to West Ham), and is committed to their “identity building”, which includes a high press that is “close to mandatory.”

“That identity has to be a very high press team, trying to recover as soon as we can, and trying to be very dominant with the ball,” he explained.

He said: “The first step can be quite inconsistent, because when you are learning and trying to apply something new, you want to try and experiment with things that you are not used to.”

Maestre hopes that he can execute his tactical philosophy against Brighton tomorrow.

He said: “Hopefully we can neutralize their on the ball main trends, trying to recover high and using the ball to settle up in the opponent half, trying to feel confident on the ball, using the ball to make the pace of the game. But we know that is not going to be easy. I think we were quite good against Manchester United in those terms, so we are confident that we are going to be able to repeat [that] again tomorrow.”