This weekend, Sunderland Women want to keep up their title push against London City.
After announcing a new contract for midfielder Natasha Fenton, Mel Reay believes Sunderland is seeking to future-proof their “special” team.
With five games remaining in the current Championship campaign, Fenton is one of several summer arrivals who have helped turn the team from relegation challengers last year to strong title contenders. Reay acknowledges that Sunderland is facing some hurdles as they prepare for both Championship and WSL games in the upcoming season, but she also asserts that the club is in a solid position and believes Fenton’s extension is unlikely to be the last.

“Natasha was a big summer target for us and it took a lot of work to get it over the line, so I’m absolutely delighted with her contribution this season,” Reay stated.
She is essential to our style of play; out of the entire team, she has likely played the most minutes and games and contributed the most assists. She has been invaluable to us in terms of her leadership abilities, and we are overjoyed that she has pledged her future to us since she is a truly unique player.

In order to future-proof the squad, we would want to close deals early in the season so that we have less work to do in the summer. With five games remaining and a really special bunch of players, hopefully Natasha will be the first to cross the finish line. We may also be preparing for the Championship, with the WSL being a possibility. We basically take each game on the field one at a time in the meantime since they both likely look extremely different in terms of what we might need to do in the summer.

“It’s a difficult task and we have to be patient with our processes, we don’t know which path we’re going to go down so we have to keep our cards quite close to our chest,” Reay said.
“We don’t need to worry about a large portion of the squad because many of our players have contracts. Since it’s hard to plan, you just have to take each game as it comes, but as the season draws to a close, things might start to become more apparent.”

Sunderland leads the league going into the weekend’s games, but Reay says nobody should get too excited as they get ready to take on London City, a team that is also vying for promotion to the Championship.

“It’s an exciting time to be a Sunderland player, we’ve got this game at London City and then the derby game which I’m sure will be a sell out,” Reay stated.

As much as it sounds cliché, we just need to take care of ourselves and make sure we’re doing everything right so that we’re still in the game come playoff time. The teams in and among us have to play each other as well, so I’m sure there will be a lot of twists and turns before the end of April. You only need to think back to the Lewes game; we were so close to taking nothing away from it. We need to concentrate on the next game.

“At this level, there is no doubt that the competition is fierce; clubs are vying for a spot in the league or elimination, therefore performance is essential. To succeed, we must be the best version of Sunderland; they recently hired a new manager, so their playing philosophy will likely change, and we are unsure of their setup, so we must concentrate on ourselves and complete our tasks.”