Bristol City’s stand-in manager Matt Beard says that this afternoon’s fixtures will create a really tense atmosphere with three clubs yet to secure their places in next season’s Barclays FA Women’s Super League.
The Robins need to win their match at Brighton & Hove Albion if they are to have any chance of climbing off the bottom of the table while Aston Villa and Birmingham City need a point to ensure their safety.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference in which FAWSL Full-Time were present, Beard said that it is going to be a very tense afternoon.
“We’ve played Brighton twice since I have been here and we won 3-0 and we lost in the FA Cup 1-0 and that was a close game,” Beard said.
“Aston Villa have got a tough opponent in Arsenal and it’s Joe’s (Montemurro) last game as well so I think that I’d rather be in our position than Aston Villa’s position with the opponent.
“At the end of the day, it is going to be a tense afternoon. Some players at this club have been in this position before, I’ve been in this position before when you are reliant on getting something on the last day so I can draw upon my experiences from that and hopefully pass that onto the players.
“The one thing that I can say about this group is that they never leave anything on the pitch. They’ve been a joy to work with and I am really looking forward to seeing what we can produce against Brighton.”
Bristol City have drawn all of their last four away league games under Beard. Looking back on those games, he said that his side deserved more than the four points that they have collected.
He added “There are probably three games this season – Birmingham away, West Ham away, Tottenham away where we should have been two to four points better off.
“On Sunday against Manchester United, we were excellent and how we didn’t get anything out of that game I’ll never know.
“I said to the girls in our pre-training meeting on Tuesday if you had been offered this position in mid-January, that you could potentially stay up on the last day of the season, we would have snapped your hand off. We were on two points and West Ham were on seven, there was a five-point gap and I believe that we had played two games, three games in some cases, more than everyone else.
“The players and the staff have been amazing to get us into this position and we know that we have got to go and win a football match. If we do that, we give ourselves a great chance.”
Bristol City’s Barclays FA Women’s Super League fixture at Brighton & Hove Albion is scheduled to kick-off at 2.30pm and will be available for fans to stream live on the FA Player.
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