Wanderers and Canberra to play for A-League pride

Western Sydney and Canberra United will be playing for pride as they attempt to shrug off respective losses when they face off in the A-League Women.

Western Sydney will look to shrug off the disappointment of their thumping loss to Melbourne Victory when they take on fellow A-League Women cellar dwellers Canberra United.

Western Sydney Wanderers - Canberra United

Both sides face each other on Tuesday, February 15, 2022.
United will be looking for their first win, Wanderers their fourth goal of the campaign.
Western Sydney are eight in the ladder, Canberra are ninth.

More A-League Women's news can be found on The Women's Game.

The Wanderers have largely been defensively stoic this season but were cracked open by a rampant Victory in Saturday's 5-0 loss.

"It's important that the girls have to regroup themselves," coach Catherine Cannuli said after the defeat.

"We play on Tuesday against Canberra and we can't dwell on this 5-0 loss because our focus over the last couple of weeks was to finish the competition as strong as possible.

"So we've really got to put this behind us now and look towards Canberra on Tuesday."

Cannuli stressed the importance of maturity, hinting the young Wanderers players would learn how to better manage a game after conceding early goals.

"No-one wants to lose 5-0. You don't want to lose at all but losing 5-0, you've got to be a little bit smarter as well on the pitch," she said.

"Once you've gone down 3-0 or 4-0, how can you close things up? You don't push more forward,."

With their respective finals hopes over, both teams are very much playing for pride amid a hectic run of fixtures due to COVID-19 postponements.

The clash at the Wanderers Centre of Football is United and Western Sydney's first meeting this season.

Canberra are coming off a 3-0 loss to Wellington - the Phoenix's first win of the season.

They are yet to win a game this season despite scoring three goals on three occasions - for three 3-3 draws.

The Wanderers have one victory to their name and have scored just three goals in 11 games.