WHEN Scotland internationals Jane Ross, Lisa Evans and Emma Mitchell were lured to clubs in Sweden and Germany, the fear was that Glasgow City's attacking threat would be seriously blunted.
The Scottish champions brought in Republic of Ireland striker Denise O'Sullivan to spearhead the attack earlier this year, but their leading goalscorer comes from closer to home. Suzanne Lappin has scored 24 goals in just 25 games already this season and none more crucial than the two earned at the Stade Maurice Defrasne on Wednesday night.
In front of 5000 Belgian fans, Lappin twice pegged back Standard Liege's lead to ensure that City will hold the edge when the second leg of the Uefa Women's Champions League last-32 tie is held at Petershill Park on Thursday night. The 2-2 draw means the Belgian champions will have to come out looking for goals.
But despite having home advantage, Lappin knows her team will have to improve on their performance in the away leg. "Standard are a really good team," says Lappin, whose 27th birthday is today. "They move the ball very well and are quick and direct going forward.
"But we know we can improve on the first leg. Getting a 2-2 draw away in Europe is a good result to everyone else, but we're disappointed we didn't come up to our own standards. It's crucial we impose ourselves better on Thursday."
When she is not scoring goals - she also came off the bench to find the net for Scotland in each of their opening two World Cup qualifiers against the Faroes and Bosnia - Lappin works as an accountant in Glasgow. Like many of her team-mates she has to juggle a full-time job with five nights' training a week.
Small wonder she was exhausted on Thursday night. After playing the night before, the squad were up at 6.30am to travel to Cologne for the flight home to Edinburgh. While most of the players then went straight to another training session, Lappin had to drive back to Glasgow. She had only negotiated a half day off with her employers, so was back behind her desk some 18 hours after playing a European tie in a different country.
This is Lappin's second spell at City, having joined Liverpool in 2011 and Chelsea the following year. She is also now back in the Scotland set-up after putting her job first while working in London. Her overall scoring record for her club is perhaps even more impressive: 195 in 225 games. It does help, though, that City dominate domestic competition.
"This has been my best season ever, both for goal scoring and for my all-round contribution," she says.
"I would also have to say I am in the best ever Glasgow City team because everybody's standards are now so high.
"When I came back to City I put a lot of pressure on myself. I didn't want to be the same player as before - I worked hard to make sure I was making a difference to the team."
With an enticing last-16 tie against Arsenal awaiting the winners, City are expecting their biggest ever crowd for the second leg against Standard. Spectators are advised to buy tickets in advance of the game.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article