In what was our first league assignment of 2023/24, second-half goals from Lauren Hemp and Jill Roord, on debut, secured a fine 2-0 victory over the Hammers in the capital.
With 20-minutes remaining Leila Ouahabi was sent off for her reaction to a tackle from Emma Harries, but we were able to see out the game excellently to seal the success.
The result represents the fourth victory out of our last five first WSL tasks of a new campaign.
And the boss was delighted with how his team managed the fixture from start to finish as we collected three vital points.
“I feel really good, I was so impressed with the performance,” Taylor declared.
“I felt even in the first half we just needed to tidy up on our final action, but I felt in terms of dominance and keeping the ball and finding the spaces we were so good.
“We tweaked a couple of things at half-time, we spoke about at times more forward runs and also we just did a slight tactical switch with Deyna and Jill changing positions in the eight and 10 and Jill comes up with a brilliant goal.
“Before that, Lauren who led the line so well scores a fantastic goal and we just needed that. We had the opportunity with Chloe and we just needed that third one to make it a bit more comfortable.
“But I like what we did with 10 players, I like how we managed the game, got the balance right, defended we needed to and I’m really impressed with the girls today.”
In the absence of clinical forward Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw in Essex, Taylor elected Hemp to the lead the line against West Ham.
And he was not only impressed by her first goal of the season, but also with her all-round performance in the striker’s role.
He added: “I think in the first half I gave her the option to, at times, [let] Mary [Fowler] come inside and she gets back out on the wing.
“Second half she took the responsibility of the nine and her goal aside I felt the way she led the line, took the knocks, really put them under pressure and even when we went down to 10-players she did it even better.”
Watch Taylor’s full post-match interview in the video player above!
