Lauren Hemp confident Lionesses will bounce back from Spain hammering

Lauren Hemp says the England squad are sticking together after their heavy defeat against Spain on Friday and they have vowed to bounce back from that hugely disappointing result, as they prepare to conclude their Women’s World Cup qualifying group with Tuesday’s visit of Ukraine to Hill Dickinson Stadium.

The European champions were outplayed in a 4-0 loss in Mallorca that saw them miss the chance to secure automatic qualification for next summer’s tournament in Brazil, with Spain instead going top of the group. By virtue of their stronger head-to-head record against England, Spain have the group’s sole automatic qualification spot firmly in their hands.

Unless Spain drop points away against Iceland, England are destined to contest the playoffs in October, regardless of their result against Ukraine, but the Lionesses are not giving up their hopes yet. Hemp said: “It’s a disappointing result for us as players. But in games like that, you probably learn the most. And it’s obviously not very nice losing how we did and by as much as we did, but it’s important for us to then look back and review it and that’s what we did.

“As a group, we’ve got together, we’ve come together and stuck together and I think that’s the most important thing about this team. It’s how we come together, especially after a tough result like that. But we’ve shown in the past that when we’ve had results like that, we’ve been able to come back and bounce back and that’s what we plan on doing tomorrow.”

The Spain result was the biggest defeat of Sarina Wiegman’s tenure as head coach and England’s heaviest in 17 years, since the 2009 European Championship final against Germany, but manager says her team has already put it behind them.

“Yes, of course it was a difficult Friday night. It felt hard, it hurt, it was sad, but we’ve moved on too because we have another game tomorrow,” Wiegman said. “It was good energy [in the post-game review], the team stuck together and we really want to show them tomorrow.”

England, who have won back-to-back European titles but have never won a World Cup, trained at Liverpool women’s team’s training ground at Melwood on Monday. The full squad were training, but it was confirmed that the Manchester City goalkeeper Khiara Keating – who had already stepped away from the squad before Friday’s game because of a concussion – will not return in time for this game after further assessments.

Wiegman indicated she will rotate her side, . “Well, it’s a qualifier [so] we want to win the game,” she said. “There are some tactical decisions to make because we expect different challenges tomorrow. And yes, I will make some changes because also some players will knock on the door and I want to see them too.”