Gateshead Ladies assistant manager Hugo Djassi feels his side were made to pay for an off day in last Sunday’s 3-2 defeat to West Allotment Celtic Ladies.
The Heed were in action not only for the first time in 2023 last weekend, but for the first time in over two months with a raft of postponements leaving them having played only eight games to date.
Their return to league competition proved a frustrating one however with a 3-2 defeat on home soil at the hands of second-bottom side West Allotment Celtic, who picked up their first points of the season on Tyneside.
“Obviously it’s never good to lose at home in the first game of the year, but the other team turned up well,” said Djassi.
“They’ve been a team that has been losing a lot of games but they turned up and got a result.
“It’s easy to look at [the postponements] as an excuse, we haven’t played for nine weeks if I’m not mistaken, but watching that game I don’t think that played a part.
“We simply didn’t turn up. We made mistakes and we paid for those, but now we need to regroup and get back at it.
“I understand that we haven’t played for a while, but we still expected higher standards from ourselves.
“We weren’t good enough, but we know what went wrong and we’re going to work on that to make it right this week.”
New arrivals Lyndsey Garthwaite and Chrid Murray both found the net in last weekend’s defeat, and their impact is one that Djassi hopes leads to a return to winning form at home this Sunday against Guisborough Town Ladies.
“Anybody that we bring in is going to add to what we already have, or come in and step the levels up, and that’s exactly what the two girls have done,” he said.
“We’ve got to go all in on Sunday, no game is going to be a walk through and the girls are aware of that.
“It’s a win that we go for every single game, and whether we’re playing top or bottom of the league we’ll go into it with the same intent.”