Sheffield United Women: Coach Luke Turner left frustrated as mistakes condemn Blades Women to 1-0 defeat at Lane to Birmingham

Luke Turner named an unchanged side from last weekend’s win against Nottingham Forest, and his side started the better of the two sides, with Alethea Paul and Rhema Lord-Mears in particular influential in driving forward early on.

Courtney Sweetman-Kirk fired just wide and Lord-Mears saw an effort from range saved, before Bex Rayner played Sweetman-Kirk through on goal and only a superb Harriet Scott tackle denied the Blades striker an opening goal.

Mia Enderby was also lively down the right and she saw a low cross just diverted away from Georgia Walters, before Walters came closest of all when her downward header came back off the post and rolled agonisingly across the goal line and away just before the break.

United’s momentum continued after the break as Walters then saw an effort saved and captain Sophie Barker fired wide, before the sucker-punch arrived when Walker tapped home Ash Hodson’s driven low cross at the back post.

The Blades found it hard to regain momentum after the goal, despite the introductions of Chene Muir and Tamara Wilcock in attack, but did go close when Naomi Hartley saw an effort from a corner scrambled away.

Bethan Davies denied substitute Charlie Devlin at the other end, but despite plenty of pressure United couldn’t find the much-needed equaliser.

The Blades’ interim head coach said the result was frustrating, as the side created their own problems.

“Very tough to take, quite frustrating,” said Turner.

“As frustrating as it was, and as good as a lot of the performance was, we are still causing our own problems and we are still gifting away opportunities at times.

“If you take the result out of it and you look at it from a bit of an outside perspective, well the performance was good and that’s a good step in the right direction.

“But it’s a results business and we need to start picking up results. So we need to make sure while we’re making those improvements we’re picking up goals at one end and stop giving opportunities for the opposition at the other end.

“We got in some really good areas again and the girls applied the game plan really, really well and I thought we were excellent in parts.

“But when we got into that final third, again we’ve got be a bit more clinical and we’ve got to start putting those chances away.”