Sarina Wiegman has urged England to be more “ruthless” in the final game of the Arnold Clark Cup against Germany on Wednesday.
The Lionesses are second in the four-team friendly tournament, level on two points with Spain. Canada top the standings having beaten Germany after a 1-1 draw with England.
Wiegman brushed aside concerns about the team’s lack of goals from the front, with the centre-back Millie Bright’s volley England’s only goal of the competition, but she conceded they do need to be more clinical.
“It doesn’t really matter who scored the goals as long as we score a goal,” the manager said. “We want to do better in the final third and that’s about decision-making, about connection, about scanning the situation and then being ruthless.
“So yes, of course, we want to do a little better because we created lots of chances. We played really well, created those chances and now we want to score them, too, and that’s just the final touch, the hardest thing.”
Germany are the highest-ranked team in the competition, at third in the world, but are missing key players, including Wolfsburg’s Almuth Schult, Svenja Huth, Alex Popp and Tabea Waßmuth and Olympique Lyonnais’s Dzsenifer Marozsán.
“They still have a very strong squad,” Wiegman said. “They are always a very good team and, even though they are missing very good players ,they still have very good players. We expect a good Germany, a very competitive game with a lot of speed and power, so we’ll be prepared like we were for Canada and Spain.”
Wiegman rotated heavily between England’s 1-1 draw with Canada and 0-0 against Spain, making nine changes, and she confirmed she would continue to experiment. “We want to continue what we were doing but make that even better against another good opponent again. We want to see some slight changes in positions.”
Wiegman has been impressed with how the squad has held up against the toughest challenges faced during her tenure. “I’ve seen a lot from us and the team. When I came in I knew the England squad was very good but it’s even better than I thought.
“The players already have so much experience and there are lots of personalities within the team. How we want to add some things, to get clarity about our style of play and development, is going really well.”
