Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor said that he was delighted with the application and quality shown by his side as they defeated West Ham United 4-1 in a Vitality Women’s FA Cup semi-final tie at The Chigwell Construction Stadium this afternoon.
Ellen White and Chloe Kelly both scored in the first half while Lauren Hemp continued her impressive goalscoring form with a second half brace.
Preparation had not been ideal for Manchester City ahead of the game with several players having clocked up the air miles on international duty but head coach Taylor said that he was pleased with the application and quality of his side.
“It’s great, it was a good performance against a tough team and I was happy with elements of our play,” Taylor said when speaking in the post-match press conference. “We scored some good goals but we could have made it more comfortable for ourselves earlier on.
“Considering the lack of preparation time that we had after the international break….we’ve had players all over the place all week and we had one training session yesterday before we made the long journey down. We have to be really happy with the application shown and the quality of the players today.”
It is almost a month before Manchester City take on Arsenal or Chelsea in the Vitality Women’s FA Cup final but Taylor went on to say that the players will remain completely professional between now and then.
He said “The players are professional, they attack games in the right manner and our job as staff and coaches is to just realign the focus.
“I spoke to the players when they arrived on Thursday and reminded them that there are four or five games to play. I told them to take their hats off from the last 10 days and quickly put ours back on and realise what we do. I thought we did that really well today.”
Manchester City are back in action again next Sunday when they host Leicester City at The Academy Stadium in the Barclays FA Women’s Super League.
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