In her latest column, West Ham United Women’s captain Gilly Flaherty discusses the impact of new manager Olli Harder in his first few weeks – as well as the prospect of seeing a familiar face in the opposite dugout at the weekend.

Last weekend was disappointing because, first and foremost, it ended in a loss to Manchester City. They’re never easy to take.

We have to acknowledge that City are one of the best teams in the league. When you just look at the strength of their squad, they’re taking off Lucy Bronze and bringing on Rose Lavelle – you can’t understate that.

We went there with a game plan and worked our socks off. Every single player worked really hard. It was tough, but when you take away the disappointment of the loss, there were positives to take away from it too.

Now, it’s about putting in that work and then having quality when we do get our chances. That’s even more crucial against the top teams.

Anyone who watched the Tottenham game, Olli Harder’s first in charge, would say that we should have won it. They had one chance and took it, whereas we had several and didn’t. If you look at the way we played, we should have taken points away from that.

Olli’s very down-to-earth and a great guy. He’s come in and has laid down his authority from minute one, and the girls have really bought into it and the way he wants to play. He’s all about values and the standards that we set, which is fantastic for our club.

His is a style which is physically tough. There’s a lot of sideways running involved, and it involves pressing until the last minute, but the girls are adapting really well to it. They’re grafting and that’s all you can really ask of them.

Sunday, against Bristol City, is a huge game – a six-pointer. They’re only two points behind us, but we still have a few games in hand on some of the teams above us.

Matt Beard has gone there to cover maternity leave. I didn’t expect to play against him so soon after he’d left, but I wish him all the best with Bristol City – just not against us, obviously!

In those cases, you put your friendship and that aside for 90 minutes – he’s the opposition manager, and I want to beat Bristol City to make sure West Ham come away with three points.

Bristol City had a brilliant result against Brighton last week and will be full of confidence, so we have to make sure we do what we did in December against them, when we won 4-0.

We played the game plan that was set out and got the result – and there’s no doubt in my mind that we can do the same thing again.