MARIEANNE Spacey-Cale insists Southampton FC's 1-0 loss to Sunderland was a demonstration of how tough the Women's Championship can be.

Southampton FC won the opening two games of the Championship season before tasting their first defeat against the Black Cats on Sunday.

The result saw Sunderland leapfrog Saints in the table as they maintained their unbeaten start to the campaign.

Speaking to the Daily Echo, the Saints boss said: “It’s a hard (result) to stomach with the amount of chances that we had." 

"It just goes to show what this league is all about. You can’t not be at your highest level and get something out of the game.

"As disappointed as we are, we have to learn the lessons from it. We have got to make sure of that in training.

I have to look at myself and make sure we put things right from today. Let’s not overdramatise it because it’s one loss from three games. We have started well. 

“You don’t ever want to lose a game but this it’s a good time to lose because we can bounce back and learn from that moving forward.

“Two games don’t make a season, so you’ve got to keep working hard to pick up points where you can.”

Saints dominated much of the game but ultimately failed to turn that constant pressure into goals.

Ella Morris went agonisingly close on two occasions before setting up Lexi Lloyd-Smith, who headed wide from eight yards out.

Sunderland goalkeeper Claudia Moan also pulled off three brilliant saves as Saints continued to pepper the away side's goal to no avail.

“If we could have taken one of those chances away and taken a point today, then it looks different and it feels different," Spacey-Cale continued.

“The feeling for me is disappointment. Not disappointed about the performance, but because we came up a little bit short today.

“Not enough players were at it today against a side like Sunderland, who you know are going to have every player up for the game.

“We are creating chances (and not scoring), but what we don’t want to do is make that an issue.

“They put the ball away for fun in training. We need to learn from what we did well today and what we didn’t do so well.

“We need that calmness in front of goal because that’s the difference between 1-0 and 1-1.

“You have these days in football, but you have to take the learnings out of it. When we watch it back something might jump out, or it might not.

“For me when you’ve got a group of 22 players who all want to be competitive and play together, that’s a big thing.

"We didn’t look as together as we did in the first two games, but it’s something we can put right.”