Gateshead Ladies manager Carl Morrison is confident that results will swing in his side’s favour after Sunday’s goalless draw against Washington AFC Women.
The stalemate leaves The Heed fifth in the North East Regional Womens Football League, following on from defeats against Wallsend BC Womens Reserves and Ponteland United Women.
Despite recent form going against his side however, Morrison feels fine margins have been the difference in front of goal.
“We watched Sunday back and we had 18 shots to three, so it was just one of those days,” he said.
“It’s been a few weeks now where it just hasn’t been clicking in front of goal for us as a team and we haven’t been putting away the chances we’ve created.
“The good thing is that we’ve been creating them, and I think having that amount of shots shows that we are doing things right, but we just need to start putting these chances away.
“Nobody is missing chances on purpose, we’re all trying to put the ball in the back of the net, and I think when that goal comes things will click again.
“We’re going through one of those spells that teams have where we aren’t scoring as regularly as we usually would, but I’m sure that will change this weekend.”
This Sunday sees Gateshead face off against Washington Women once more, in what will be the latter’s first home fixture of the NERWFL season having played all seven fixtures away from home so far.
A win could take The Heed as high as third in the league table, but Morrison is keen to stress that the hosts’ league position is not entirely as it seems.
“Washington are a really good team,” he added.
“The run of fixtures they’ve had has been quite tough and they’ve had a lot of postponements, so they haven’t really been able to get any rhythm going.
“We know what we’re up against and we’ll be potentially looking to freshen the team up a little bit to perhaps come with something slightly different to last week.
“The table is a bit deceiving when it comes to Washington, we said to the girls last week that if we weren’t on it here then we could lose.
“Although we did dominate the game in terms of stats, they had a chance at the end where they could have pinched it and Carly [Salmon] has bailed us out with a brilliant save.
Photo: Charlie Waugh
“They’re good opposition, and we know what test we’ll be in for.”
Recent weeks have seen a three of the club’s under-16 side make the step up to the first team, with Jessica Weighall making her debut before Ellie Burns and Grace Smith were introduced as substitutes for the first time against Wallsend.
“It’s great to see the job that is being done with the under-16’s,” said Morrison.
“We’re really fortunate that we’ve got a massively talented group who have had really good coaching, and they’re a fantastic group of girls with fantastic parents.
“We’ll be looking to utilise that as much as possible, and bring as many players through as we can, because we know what we’re getting.
“We’re trying to create a really good environment and culture where these girls can step into senior football and be challenged, but also develop as people and players, and that is our focus.
“We’ll look to recruit externally, as we always are, but we’ve got a big focus on developing our own within the ladies system at Gateshead, and we think we’re just getting started with that to be honest.”
