Villa defeat is a "tough one to take" for Willie Kirk

Willie Kirk witnessed his Leicester City side fall to a heavy 5-0 defeat at Villa Park in an all-Midlands Women's Super League game.

A goal from Kenza Dali added to braces from Alisha Lehmann and Rachel Daly handed the Foxes their biggest loss since the start of December when they shipped eight against Chelsea.

However there is still a positive atmosphere in the squad as they battle for their WSL survival, as Kirk admitted that "the mood (in the squad) has always been really good and really positive but I suppose there’s a bit of me that doesn’t want it to be good… it shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t be positive after a 5-0 defeat."

• Playing a "clinical" Villa

Despite the one sided scoreline, Leicester were more than in the game and actually ended up finishing the 90 minutes having had more possession, made more passes and taken more shots than their hosts.

This was revealed to the visiting manager after the game, as he said "The scoreline is a tough one to take, it’s not one I saw coming. I’ve just been told we had more possession and more shots on goal… I think that probably tells you the story of it."

Villa had eleven shots compared to the Foxes' twelve but it was clearly a story of a side with a striker gunning for the golden boot compared to a team that has not had a player score one more goal in the league all season, with each of their seven goals coming through different players.

"I think Villa were very clinical, I think we made some fundamental basics that we never got right and for large periods of the first half I don’t think we got it right and we were punished. I think we were bright enough going forward at times, I think we created chances but we certainly weren’t as clinical as Villa and I think that sums up a lot of Villa’s season.

"I think they’ve been massively clinical throughout which has put them in the position they’re in and we need to find solutions going into the last six games", Kirk added.

• Third and fourth goals were "sucker punches"

Just as it looked like Leicester would go into the changing rooms two down at half time, Rachel Daly scored with the final action of the first half and Kirk explained how much of a blow that goal was to his side.

He claimed "the third goal and the fourth goal were real sucker punches. The third goal was just on the stroke of half time, we felt at 2-0 we could have got the team in and galvanised them to go and attack the second half, so at 3-0 it was obviously quite difficult but I think we started the second half quite quickly and you never know what happens if it goes 3-1, you don’t know how Villa will respond."

"After (the fourth goal) it was damage limitation which is really, really disappointing to be in the position where you have to think about that and we kept going until the end and kept trying to create chances which was pleasing but we need to take responsibility for the performance and move on quickly."

• More clubs should be like Leicester

Over 6,000 fans were in attendance at Villa Park in what is a rare occasion to have Villa's women side playing at the ground their male counterparts play at every week.

On the other hand, the King Power Stadium plays host to all Leicester matches in the Women's Super League and the man who gets to sit in the home dugout explained that he believed along with increased use of large stadia, there is a need for more matches to be played in the league.

He said: "I think our crowds at the King Power have been okay this year, they’re continuing to improve and we’ve decided as a club to play at the King Power Stadium every game so you don’t get those one-off boosts because you're there all the time but when you look at some of the games played at the men’s stadiums you get a fantastic one off crowd so I think it’s getting the balance between doing it every week or just doing it as a one off, and we prefer to do it every week… I think we need consistency and more games, to follow a team that only has one game at home a month, it’s really difficult to build that momentum with your crowds."

Their home support will be vital in the run in to the end of the season, with three games at their Filbert Way ground to go, and making a plea to the people of Leicester, Kirk said "I don’t think you can underestimate how much of a boost it would be to the players to get as many as we can over to the King Power as possible."

"This is about out football club as a collective, it’s not about a manager, this is not about eleven players on the field, this is about the whole football club and the fans are very much a part of that so we need as many as we can get down to King Power Stadium over the next three games and cheer us on to three points and give us every bit of energy that they can give us to ensure that we’re still playing WSL football next season."

• More needs to be done to promote women's football

Kirk ended by speaking on Women's Football Weekend about the promotion of women's football and explained that there is still work to be done to promote games. 

He declared: "I think the publicity around (women’s football) could be better. Sometimes you can go a week and not see any adverts or read anything on the newspapers or see anything on newspapers or websites so I think there’s got to be a bigger push collectively as a group of clubs and the Football Association to do that."

This ties in with his comments about getting a better number of clubs using large stadia for their games as there are always likely to be larger crowds at larger grounds.