Aberdeen Women co-manager Gavin Beith has urged his side to be mentally strong ahead of their clash with SWPL 1 heavyweights Glasgow City.
The Dons travel to Petershill for their fourth game of the season, having picked up their first point of the campaign after drawing with Partick Thistle last weekend.
Aberdeen failed to pick up any points against professional outfit City last season, and conceded 19 goals over the three SWPL 1 games between the two sides.
However, in two of those games, the Dons either went in level at half-time or kept a second-half clean sheet, which co-manager Beith believes is proof his side can be competitive.
He reckons Aberdeen need to be mentally strong over the entire 90 minutes on Sunday in order to keep themselves in the game.
Beith explained: “We need the players to have the belief and the confidence that they can compete with Glasgow City for long periods of time.
“There’s every chance that things will go wrong in the game and we might concede goals, but if we have that right mindset, then we can move on from any mistakes.
“We know we’ll be up against it and the girls will be tired because you’re running around for long periods of the game, so they need to be mentally strong.
“If they do that then they can keep pushing for the entire 90 minutes. It’s about making sure that when things go wrong you just reset, and it’s a cliché but you go back to 0-0.
“So, you have to think ‘how do we get through the next five minutes, and then the next ten minutes’ and that’s how we’ll try and approach this game.”
A strict game plan against City
Although teams like Glasgow City prove to be trickier opposition on the pitch than most teams in SWPL 1, Beith reckons those matches are sometimes easier to prepare for.
The Dons co-boss says his side know what kind of game to expect when they play City – a game where they will see little of the ball – so they must focus on their own task.
Beith said: “The games against Glasgow City, you know what you need to. It makes it easier in a way because you know exactly how you’ll need to set up to cope with them.
“It’s going to be really hard and we know we probably won’t have the ball for long periods of time because they have top quality players who keep the ball so well.
“We’ll need to be disciplined, and resilient when things don’t go our way. It’s about sticking to the task at hand, which we believe the girls can do.
“Our task is to make it as competitive as possible, and they need to believe that they can do that. If we do that, then we’ll be fine.
“We’ll have to try and match their effort and work-rate, which is maybe something that we haven’t done in the first two games. We’ve maybe questioned it a little bit.
“So, hopefully, we can go down there and right some wrongs to ensure this team can go and compete at this level.”