Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor says that this afternoon’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Liverpool will be every bit as difficult as the club’s midweek contest with European champions FC Barcelona.
The Cityzens recorded a famous 2-0 win against the Spanish giants at The Joie Stadium on Wednesday evening. Manchester City now turn their attentions towards a very different test; a fixture against Matt Beard’s physical and aggressive Liverpool side at Anfield.
When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Manchester City boss Taylor said that there’s no reason why Liverpool won’t push towards the higher end of the Barclays Women’s Super League table this season whilst highlighting the difficulty of the challenge that awaits his side on Merseyside
“I don’t see why not,” Taylor said when asked about Liverpool’s chances of challenging towards the top of the table. “Sometimes, you can see that a team has the resources; the recruitment that they’ve done and obviously, Matt being there for a while now, he’s been able to establish it in his way.
“Liverpool, Brighton, Villa are probably showing more capability than their points tallies show and I think there’s some real healthy competition in there at the moment. I look at the calendar and when I look at our fixtures and other teams’ fixtures, it’s hard to see any fixture that is really favourable for you. Everybody is really fighting so hard.
“We played a top level opponent [in Barcelona] the other night but this game is every bit as difficult for various reasons. It’s really good for us that it’s played at Anfield, it’s fantastic, it’s a really good experience for the girls.”
Going on to discuss the switch from playing a possession-based footballing side in Barcelona to a more physical team in Liverpool, Taylor said that Manchester City have an ability to adapt very quickly.
He said “When you come up against Liverpool, Matt has always wanted to be really aggressive with his teams. They played slightly different against Spurs recently and went from a back-five to a back-four and ended up winning the game.
“We never see anything that we haven’t prepared for previously, there’s nothing out there that will massively surprise you. For us, it’s always about where the spaces are and most of the time, when you come up against Matt’s teams that are super-aggressive, they leave quite a lot of space in-behind which at times, we have been able to exploit.
“We will be ready. The players are in a good space where within the first five minutes of the game, if it’s something slightly different to what we anticipated, they are very bright in recognising where the spaces are that might have changed from what we previously identified.”
Manchester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Liverpool kicks-off at 3pm.
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