Oxford United Women travel to Chichester City this Sunday (14:00 KO) in a long-awaited return to league action.
Team news
Manager Liam Gilbert told us:
“Chichester look to be a team who are improving as the season goes on. If you look at when they recently took Crawley to penalties in their cup game, they seem to be getting better but that always happens with a young side.”
“Now it’s all about stitching consistent performances together and taking our recent form into the league. There’s no doubting the ability that we have got, and we’ve got competition for places, which is always a good thing.”
“We’ve had quite a long break in games, and I guess that can’t be helped, and now we’ve got so many fixtures coming up in a short space of time. That’s the nature of how things have fallen so far this season, and we’ll aim to start this run strongly – starting with Chichester at the weekend.”
Tickets
For those making the trip down to the south coast, adult tickets are priced at £4 whereas under-16s can get into the Bunn Leisure Stadium for only £1
Supporters can also follow our social media channels to keep up to date with all the news on matchday - including pre-match team news, in-game updates and post-match interviews. You can find our Twitter and Instagram handles @OfficialOUWFC, as well as Facebook @OxfordUnitedWomen.
Five game form-guide:
Oxford- W: 4D: 0 L: 1
United have been scoring goals for fun lately, netting 18 goals in their last two games. While The U’s' most recent result, a 12-0 win vs Oxford City, saw United reach the County Cup final focus now switches to the league after last week’s fixture against Gillingham was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. The only loss in the last five came in the form of a narrow defeat to Cardiff City just before Christmas, but since then United have netted another 6 against Keynsham in their last league encounter in January.
Chichester- W: 1D: 0 L: 4
Chichester City have fallen to defeats in their last three games. While the Lillywhites bowed out of the WNL Plate with a 4-0 defeat to Watford, Chichester ran top-of-the-league Crawley Wasps close with a 1-0 away defeat in their last game.
Chichester’s One to Watch: Gemma Simmonds
Experienced midfielder Gemma Simmonds re-signed for Chichester at the beginning of the 2018/19 season and has been a mainstay in the Lillywhites’ midfield since. Simmonds will be a familiar name to Oxford fans, as she featured for United while playing at FA Women’s Championship level. The popular midfielder is also Chichester’s second top goal goalscorer during this campaign.