London City Lionesses can’t use New Den ‘home’ fixture as an excuse says Maestre | OneFootball

London City Lionesses head coach Eder Maestre says that there can be no excuses from his side when they face Chelsea on neutral territory at The New Den this weekend.

The Pride will stage their home fixture against The Blues at Millwall FC due to their usual venue, The Copperjax Community Stadium in Bromley being unavailable.

When speaking to the media in the pre-match press conference, London City Lionesses boss Maestre said that the venue change cannot be an excuse for loss of home advantage.

“Today, we are going to train here so we get used to the pitch and the surroundings,” Maestre explained. “We need to think of this as our second pitch and believe that it is ours. We need to understand that we are at home rather than being far away from Bromley. It is not an excuse to have that underdog mentality. 

“We know that Chelsea have one of the best teams in the world but they played in midweek and have a Champions League game next week, so they need to cope with their situation.

“We need to understand that we are going to have chances to overcome Chelsea. We just need to believe in ourselves and create that mentality rather than focus on things that are not in our control.”

Playing at The New Den provides London City Lionesses with the opportunity to experience a bigger stadium than usual and Maestre wants this kind of arena to become the norm for the club.

He said “It’s awesome playing matches in this kind of stadium. It’s something that we need to recognise and be pleased about. Hopefully, in the future, every game could be in this kind of stadium.

“We want to try to provide an exciting experience for the fans. We want them to fill the stands and feel the energy that we’ve had at Bromley.

“It’s a complete pleasure being in this kind of stadium and having the experience of playing at The New Den.”

London City Lionesses recorded their first home sell-out last weekend as they went down 2-0 to Arsenal in Bromley. Maestre said that his side can take learnings from that experience.

He said “Hopefully, we can feel the same energy from the crowd. The other day was amazing, the way we could feel the energy of the crowd.

“We need to use the energy of the crowd to be more clinical in the moments that matter, take our chances. If we want to be a team that pushes at the top of the table, we need to move forward and take advantage of the crowd when they’re giving us extra energy to be clinical in every action.

“It’s a learning process. Last weekend was the first sell-out and it was amazing. Sometimes, we were maybe a little be overwhelmed with the situation but it’s something that we have to learn to cope with. It’s a part of the process.”

London City Lionesses’ Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Chelsea kicks-off at 12pm on Saturday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.