Derby day has arrived in Manchester with bitter rivals City and United set to go head-to-head at the Etihad Stadium this afternoon.
More than 43,000 fans are set to cheer the two sides on, the majority expecting the home side to perform and claim the three points.
When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor said that experience will be key as his side look to normalise what will be a special derby occasion at the Etihad Stadium.
“Experience is great to have, we have a lot of young players as well so they’ll draw on the experience of the older players,” Taylor said. “That’ll help us normalise things because there is quite a bit of hype around this game being away from the normal stadium that we play in.
“Our job is to keep things simple, do what we do. We’ve been playing really well recently and everyone is really contributing. Within that, we are also really looking forward to the game.”
Manchester City have not played at the Etihad Stadium since September 2019. Despite more than three years having passed since their last Etihad outing, Taylor said that his side very much see the game as a home fixture and that they will look to enjoy the experience.
He said “It’s a great occasion, we are going to go out and try to do our very best to be as effective as we can be. I think we need to enjoy the experience regardless of the way the game goes.
“We are in good form, good spirits. It’s two good teams going up against each other and we just want to try and finish off the year on a positive note.
“It’s great to play at the main stadium. We really enjoy playing at the CFA, we’ve made that a really dominant ground for us and our win percentage is really high. This is a different experience for us but we will still look to use home advantage.
“Whether it has been long overdue since we have been here is immaterial really, a lot has happened since (2019) with COVID, that brought its own problems and issues. We are just pleased to be here, pleased to see really good numbers and hopefully, everybody enjoys the game.”
The Barclays Women’s Super League fixture between Manchester City and Manchester United is scheduled to kick-off at 12.30pm. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.