Manchester United head coach Marc Skinner says that he is expecting his side to come up against a ‘fully charged’ Manchester City when the pair contest their FA Women’s Continental League Cup fixture at the Leigh Sports Village this evening.
The Cityzens arrive in Leigh with a good record away from home this season despite having battled with a catalogue of injury problems throughout the campaign. It is at home where Manchester City have struggled, they lost their third consecutive Barclays FA Women’s Super League fixture at The Academy Stadium on Sunday as Chelsea ran out 4-0 winners.
When speaking in his pre-match press conference, Manchester United boss Skinner said that opponents Manchester City have put in some encouraging performances this season and he expects the blue side of the city to be ‘fully charged’ this evening.
“They are playing okay football,” Skinner said when discussing the situation at Manchester City with FAWSL Full-Time. “They are making uncharacteristic mistakes which are then leading to goals.
“They are a possession-based team and they are very principled in the way that they play so I don’t overly think that they are playing poorly at all. I think that they are having good spells in games and just maybe it’s not falling for them the way that they would like it to. We are going to take them like we would when we play any derby, we know that we are playing against a team with lots and lots of qualities.
“We look at results and sometimes the results are true and sometimes they are a little bit falsified, Chelsea are ruthless whenever you play them anyway so it was a tough ask for them. I expect a fully charged team ready to play against us and that’s what we have to prepare for.”
Manchester United have had their own problems in recent weeks, conceding late goals in their last four games. Skinner said that his side can’t afford to switch off for a second.
He said “The thing for me is that when I look at the goals conceded, we are not being peppered by any means, they are goals that we can control. You sometimes have to just reset, go back to the basics of those defensive principles and do them, make sure that we are synced in our thought processes and try to avoid as many as the psychological clichés as possible.
“It is definitely a game of psychology, everybody knows that. I just believe that we are in a place where we need to get back to understanding that we are putting ourselves in good positions in games. We are having good territory, good control in most areas and we are just switching off for a second. We just have to focus and then that grit comes in.”
The FA Women’s Continental League Cup tie between Manchester United and Manchester City kicks-off at 7pm.
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