‘You can’t miss a beat’ – Manchester United must be fully-committed against Brighton says Skinner | OneFootball

Manchester United head coach Marc Skinner says that his side must bring energy and be fully-committed when they face Brighton & Hove Albion this afternoon.

The Red Devils travel to Crawley to take on The Seagulls in their latest Barclays Women’s Super League match.

When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Manchester United boss Skinner highlighted the difficulty of the task and said that his side must go into the game fully-committed.

“When you go to Brighton, you can’t miss a beat,” Skinner said. “You’ve got to be full of energy, you’ve got to be fully-committed. Brighton are fully-committed to what they do, they don’t concede many goals, especially in the league, so we’ve got to be at that stage where we fully-commit and that’s what I’m going to remind the players of as we go into this.”

Manchester United have failed to win in recent league fixtures at Brighton and Skinner said that his side must play the conditions and the game well.

He said “I think we need to replicate the cup performance that we had there a couple of seasons ago. We were totally dominant.

“I don’t think it’s one of those games. I think them and West Ham are similar; the pitch plays a part in the way that your game plan has to go because it’s a tight pitch, it screams for you to make mistakes on it rather than being fluid, it’s tight. You’ve got to play the pitch as well as you play the opponent.

“I have big respect for Dario [Vidošić] and what they’re doing. They don’t concede many in the league, so we’ve got to be at our game. We’ve got to be tight, watch their counter-attacks, they’re good in the build-up. We’ve got to learn to play the pitch instead of the opponent.”

Manchester United face a tricky five-game block before the next international window and Skinner highlighted two focus points for his side in the coming weeks.

He said “I think we can go and attack all of these games like we want to win them, that’s not arrogance, it’s the confidence that we’ve set ourselves up with and the expectation that we all have. 

“I want to see us be more ruthless early on in games because I think we’re creating a lot of chances but not putting them all away. We’ve tended to leave them later in games, so I want to make sure that we can do that. If you can do that, you can fully-rotate the squad and get the balance. I also want to make sure that at the end of this block and the next block, every player is ready to play their part within what we are doing. Those are the two focus areas.”

Manchester United’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Brighton & Hove Albion kicks-off at 12pm.