Emma Kelly is urging her Sunderland team-mates to keep up the momentum after they recorded a sixth straight win in all competitions with a 5-2 FA WSL Continental Tyres Cup victory over Everton.
Kelly bagged a goal either side of half-time while Beth Mead also claimed a double and Stephanie Roche grabbed her first Sunderland goal.
Sunderland 5-2 Everton
FA WSL Continental Tyres Cup
Group Two
The Hetton Centre
Wednesday 30 July 2015
Everton battled hard and scored through Emily Hollinshead and Michelle Hinnigan but they could not keep up with the FA WSL 1 leaders, and Kelly does not want Sunderland to take their foot off the pedal.
"I think it was a really good performance,” she said. “Over the last couple of games I don't think we have been playing at our best, I think we've picked it up this game, and that's shown as we have scored five goals.
"I hadn't scored in quite a while before last week, it's nice to get two goals. I've been told to be more confident and direct so obviously that is paying off.
"The momentum is huge, we can't show any weaknesses to other teams. I think we've got to keep strong and keep consistent, momentum is extremely important.
“We have Manchester City next up in this competition and we've played them before and didn't have the best result, but I think recently we've showed how good we are against some big teams like Chelsea, we are just going to go in confident and hope for the best.”
And despite suffering a second consecutive Continental Cup defeat Everton coach Nicola Anderson was delighted at how side refused to throw in the towel.
"We knew coming here it was going to be a tough test, Sunderland have been in fantastic form and we knew it was going to be challenge coming here,” Anderson said.
"We knew Beth Mead was going to be a threat, she was in fine form, and it was our job to make sure we contained here.
“We could have downed tools but we persisted, we kept working had on the gameplan we wanted to do, we kept fighting, we kept battling, we kept pressing and that showed huge character for the players.
“The words at half-time were about how we were doing well and how we had to go out and battle during the second half.
“We needed to settle into the second half, but that took longer than what we wanted. But the players got the ball down and played some good football.”
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