Titleholders hope to improve chances for play-off spot
In round 10 of the EHF Champions League Women, the Match of the Week will take place in Norway, as the reigning champions Vipers Kristiansand, who have struggled so far in the current tournament, will try to regain confidence by beating Krim Mercator Ljubljana.
In the same group B, the leaders Team Esbjerg will play at FTC-Rail Cargo Hungaria, while in group A, the two best-placed teams Odense Håndbold and Györi Audi ETO KC will meet in Denmark.
We haven’t performed as we wanted in at least three of our latest EHF Champions League games. On Saturday, I hope we can bounce back and perform well though. We want to be better than we were in our last game, so that we can have some positive things to bring to the games that are ahead of us.
We look forward to our first home match after the Christmas break. It is a big game where we can take a huge step towards our goal for top two teams. We know Györ is a great team, and we must perform at our best. But if we do and get our defence going, I am sure that we can take the two points.
I expect a tough game against Odense. Their current coach, who came from Vipers, likes to play a fast game. It's true, their handball was already like that last season. This match will certainly be high intensity with a lot of running.
A huge performance is needed to win, because it is not going to be easy. We have had a rough start to this new year, and those performances will not get us two points in Hungary. So we need to step up, but we have done that before and we know how to.
I hope that we can improve even more against Krim. We have to be tougher and more precise in both attack and defence. We have to make less technical faults, and we have to be on the front foot.
We have another match ahead of us, another against a rival from Denmark. We have had a meeting with Esbjerg, in which we presented ourselves decently. Now we are facing a match against another top team not only for Denmark, but also for Europe. We hope to play well and give a lot of joy to our fans.
We are favourites against the Polish team, but it's a team which has a very, very atypical style. They play incredibly unorthodox compared to what we are used to here in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.
The next game against Metz will be a new final for us. After the results from last weekend, we have to win these two points at home. We know that it will be very a difficult game, so we have to prepare as well as possible and be focused on the match.
