Hibs Women 'were better than Glasgow City', says Dean Gibson, as he bemoans lack of luck

Hibs Women boss Dean Gibson reckons his side need a rub of the green on the pitch, as he insisted his team had been better than Glasgow City, despite a 4-0 home defeat on Wednesday night.

Lauren Davidson opened the scoring for the visitors with just two minutes on the clock and Hayley Lauder doubled the advantage on 24 minutes.

Emily Whelan made it three shortly before the interval and Kinga Kozak scored a fourth in first-half injury time.

Siobhan Hunter saw a penalty on the hour mark saved by Erin Clachers while Mairead Fulton was similarly foiled from the spot by Benne Håland with 20 minutes remaining.

"It maybe sounds stupid but I thought we were by far the better team in both halves. In between the boxes I thought we were excellent and passed a very good team off the pitch,” Gibson said afterwards.

"We were hurting Glasgow City, we were getting to the edge of their box when we wanted to but perhaps our decision-making in the final third needs to be better."

The result leaves Hibs sixth in the SWPL1 table with six points from their opening five games. A common theme in the defeats has been the loss of soft goals.

"We can’t keep giving away soft goals,” Gibson stated. "If we weren’t doing that we would have dominated most of our games so far.

Dean Gibson feels Hibs Women's luck needs to change on the pitch

“The four goals were just bizarre. The first one – Benne makes a very good save, we don’t follow up and they react first; the second is just a cross that goes in off a player; the third is a flick-on and again it’s not an attempt on goal, it just trickles in and for the fourth goal Siobhan Hunter wins the first ball and where our luck’s at, it falls to the City player who connects with it cleanly.

"They aren’t things we can work on and improve on, or do better – our luck just has to turn.

"Maybe we need to react better to the second ball for the first and fourth goals but the ball has to fall somewhere and at the moment, unfortunately for us, it’s falling to the opposition.

"But I couldn’t be more proud of the girls; they were excellent against a very good team. When you’re 4-0 down you start snatching at things so when we had chances the players were just so eager to get back into the game. Had we been 1-0 up, maybe we make better decisions because our composure is better or our confidence is high.

"Even at 4-0 down we were the better side. It’s very easy to play when you’re 4-0 up; it’s harder to play when you’re 4-0 down but we did that.”

Gibson insists his team are on the verge of being a ‘very good side’.

"Our shape is good, the desire on the pitch is there, the players are working hard and we’re stopping other teams from playing but we seem to have a weakness with crosses coming into our box,” he continued.

"We need to try to fix it but it needs to come from within the players.

"If we can fix that and not give away soft goals we can be a very good side.”