Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor has acknowledged the fact that West Ham United have been strong opponents on their own turf this season.
The Cityzens travel to The Chigwell Construction Stadium to face The Hammers in today’s only Barclays FA Women’s Super League fixture.
Only Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion have defeated West Ham United at their own stadium this season and when speaking in his pre-match press conference, Manchester City boss Taylor acknowledged the fact that his side face a tough match.
“They’ve built a reputation over the last couple of seasons as being a mainstay in the league,” Taylor said. “They’ve only lost twice at home all year. They’ve probably only played single figure games at home but it is a stat for us to be wary of, it is not an easy place for teams to go to, teams have found that this season.
“They look like they are building something there, they’re a solid part of the WSL now and I’m sure that they will want to push on from that level.”
With Manchester City fighting for European qualification and the Vitality Women’s FA Cup, it promises to be an exciting end to the campaign for The Cityzens. Taylor went on to say that his side are in a good space going into the final weeks of the campaign.
He said “We are in a good rhythm, we are feeling confident. We know the amount of effort that it has taken from everyone to get to this point where we are and we have got ourselves back into a real good situation of having won a good trophy, we’ve got an opportunity to win another and we’ve got an opportunity to get into Europe.
“Given where we were at the start of the season, if anybody had have offered that we would have snapped their hands off. In saying that, we want more, we continually want to improve – improve our goal record, improve our goals against record, improve our style and hopefully, that will improve the results even more so.
“It’s exciting and the players who have come back in have managed the situation really well, complimented each other very well in the team. Some have come in, some have come out but we haven’t dropped our levels which is really pleasing.”
Manchester City’s Barclays FA Women’s Super League fixture against West Ham United kicks-off at 11.30am.