Paul Konchesky has hailed his side’s gritty draw with Arsenal on Sunday as a sign of the progress West Ham have made over the course of the season in their bid to compete with the league’s top teams.
The Hammers had failed to glean a single point from their eight previous WSL matches against the Gunners, but on Sunday evening, a combination of intrepid breaks forward in the first half and an unapologetically ruthless defensive display in the second ensured that a first point was secured along with a first league point since 11 December.
The result could prove critical for West Ham’s ambitions of challenging the league’s top sides. Heading into the winter break, the Hammers looked to be the side destined to threaten the league’s top four teams, but a slump in form after the turn of the year left the Hammers trailing Everton and Aston Villa as they lumbered in seventh place.
Nevertheless, Sunday’s performance saw the team’s usual unrelenting defensive mentality on display, along with a far more ambitious approach to start the match than West Ham have previously afforded themselves.
And Konchesky acknowledged the shift post-match, going on to consider the display a tangible sign of the progress his side are making in bridging the competitive gap to the table’s top.
“This game was a good sign of the progress that we are making towards that, but to get there you need to take points off of the top teams,” he told the club’s website. “This was our first point from one of the top teams this season and hopefully there's going to be many more to come.”
Konchesky has long voiced his desire to develop West Ham into a genuine league competitor but has also remained tempered in his expectations given the financial gulf separating West Ham from the top sides.
Still, the former West Ham player has inculcated his squad with an intrepid conviction that has seen them overperform against better-supported sides. Against Arsenal, that conviction was seen vividly in a second half that saw West Ham register zero touches in the opposition box and no shots at goal as the Gunners railed forward in search of a goal.
“All eleven of them on the pitch tonight were defending for their lives,” Konchesky said. “We kept a clean sheet which was fantastic for Mackenzie Arnold and the back four, but defending starts from the front and every single one of them today had to put a shift in. When someone's out of position, someone else has to fill in and they all did that brilliantly this evening.”
Forward Vivianne Asseyi and new signing Amelia Thestrup, who replaced Asseyi on the hour mark, best epitomised this as they harried across the pitch to help put in a consummate defensive performance.
And Konchesky hoped the performance will provide a springboard heading into West Ham’s midweek Conti Cup semi-final clash against another WSL behemoth in Chelsea.
“Those who watched us tonight were able to see what we are about and hopefully we can go one step further in the Conti Cup on Thursday,” he said.
West Ham return to action on Thursday when they welcome league leaders Chelsea to Dagenham’s Chigwell Construction Stadium for the Conti Cup semi-final.
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