Colin Staples | We need to improve, we've had a wake-up call

Colin Staples has challenged his Swansea City Ladies side to do better after their narrow win over Cyncoed at the weekend.

Goals from Chloe Chivers and Shaunna Jenkins sealed a 2-1 win for the Swans in their Welsh Premier Women’s League Cup opener.

It maintained their 100 per cent record in domestic competition, but head coach Staples felt the performance had been below the standards the Welsh champions have set themselves.

And he expects to see an improved showing when they take on Cardiff Met, who they deposed as champions last term and also have a 100 per cent record, next time out.

“The performance was not our best, but that doesn’t take any credit away from Cyncoed who I thought were magnificent,” he said.

“Their determination and their shape gave us problems to solve and unfortunately we struggled to solve it, so it is back to training basically.

“It is 100 percent a wake-up call for us. We have to regain our standards rather than improve because the players are more than capable but, based on this performance, we need to better.

“When we face Cardiff Met next week we have to be at the races.”

Staples particularly felt there had been a lack of tempo and fluency with the ball from the Swans.

“It was a little bit slow and laboured. At the back we were fine keeping the ball but once we moved forward into the depths where they had a good defensive shape, we struggled to find the right ball,” he added.

“Every point and every goal we score is a positive but within that scale there are good games and poor games, and I felt this was a poor one.”