Darren Carter’s Birmingham City side bowed out of the FA Cup this weekend, after being defeated by Brighton and Hove Albion at home. His side defended well in open play but was unlucky to go down twice from set pieces.
Here’s what the manager had to say after the game:
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On the result
“I think in the second half we were excellent. I thought we were good first half, but we said at half time that we seemed hesitant in our press and going after Brighton.”
“In the second half, we were all that, we stepped into the game and penned them in and dominated. We’re really disappointed that we’ve one, not scored, and disappointed with both goals.”
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On the goals and refereeing decisions
“The first one is in our control, obviously straight from a corner and that’s disappointing, and the second one is out of our control because it’s never a penalty. I've watched it 2, 3, 4 times, it's never a penalty.”
“We conceded the corner, and it was a little bit sloppy on our part. We know that Poppy Patterson has great delivery with her left foot, and it was a great area she put it in. Our decision-making has cost us, and they got themselves in front.”
“You could see they had their tails up and then it’s our challenge to stunt that momentum and shift it back to get a foothold back into the game, and it’s not helped when it’s a poor refereeing decision that impacts the game in a big, big way.”
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On his player’s performances
“I thought my players were excellent, I thought their response was excellent, we’ve said all season it’s about our reactions. Whether things are in or out of our control and how we react.”
“They [Birmingham] were excellent in the second half and I was very proud of them, but gutted for them because they deserved a lot more than what they received today.”
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On the gap between WSL and the Championship
“I think every time we’ve gone up against WSL sides this season it’s been very tight games. We played earlier in the season and beat Everton who was an in-form team at the time at the top half of the WSL.”
“We went to West Ham and played well, and I thought we were unlucky in the Conti Cup earlier this season. We’ve shown from our standpoint that we can compete against WSL teams, we feel our squad is strong and we’ve got good experience within that.”
“The gap isn’t massive, I think you’ve seen a lot of games between WSL and Championship sides that have shown that and is great for the Championship to be pushing WSL teams. The standard is getting higher and that’s only a great thing.”
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The player's view
Birmingham Centre-back Gemma Lawley also spoke about the player's perspective of hosting the WSL side, as well as being proud of her teammates for their successful cup run.
“We started the game really well, to concede those goals in the first half killed the momentum for the rest of the half, but to then come out and show the performance in the second half, we were really unlucky.”
“Whoever we come up against we want to perform at our best. We want to keep going in the right direction and get some consistency.”
“We’ve had a really good cup run and the intention was to reach the final at Wembley, so we're gutted, but we can be proud of ourselves and go again on Wednesday against Crystal Palace.”
