England ‘to give everything’ to start strong against Australia says Wiegman | OneFootball

England head coach Sarina Wiegman says that her side will give everything to make a positive start in their international friendly against Australia on Tuesday night.

The Lionesses face the CommBank Matildas in the second game of the ‘Homecoming Series’ at Pride Park in Derby.

England have conceded the first goal in each of their last four matches. When speaking in the pre-match press conference, England boss Wiegman insisted that the Lionesses haven’t started every game badly but they will be determined to come out full of energy against Australia.

“First of all, we haven’t started slow in all of the games,” Wiegman said. “In the Spain game, we started well and could have scored the first goal, the Italy game was the same, we didn’t start well against Sweden but the France game we started well and scored a goal [that was disallowed]. I don’t agree that we have slow starts all of the time, we just fell behind.

“I do agree that on Saturday [against Brazil], we didn’t start well and we had to be more physical. We’ve talked about that, we’ve reviewed it and the players felt the same. We are definitely going to give everything to start better tomorrow.”

England were 2-0 down to Brazil after 18 minutes in the first game of the ‘Homecoming Series’ in Manchester on Saturday evening. Wiegman says that her side must improve their decision-making and execution against Australia.

She said “Brazil challenged us in ways that we haven’t been challenged that much in games, so that’s why I was so happy with this game. They just wanted to play one v one all over the pitch which was harder later on because we had an overload 11 v 10.

“This game tomorrow will challenge us in different ways. In general, when we are in possession, we want to be quicker in our decision-making and do a little bit better with our technical execution; the first touch and with the pace of the ball, passing, executions and connections. That’s what we talked about for the game tomorrow and of course, we want to take out those transition moments.”

Going on to discuss the challenge of Australia, Wiegman said that she is expecting to face more top class opposition.

She said “With Joe Montemurro, they’ve got a new coach since the summer and they’ve played a couple of friendlies. What we’ve seen is that they’re a very powerful team, they’re a top team. Earlier, they played direct but now, they’re playing more in the build too. That’s what we expect tomorrow and let’s see how we can challenge them.”

England’s international friendly against Australia kicks-off at 7pm tomorrow night. The match has been declared a sell-out.