Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor says that Willie Kirk is the right man to help turn Leicester City’s form around.
Taylor’s Manchester City side travel to The Pirelli Stadium to take on Kirk’s Foxes in the final round of group matches in the FA Women’s Continental Tyres League Cup this evening.
On paper, Manchester City will be seen as the red-hot favourites to win the match, however, Leicester City have shown an improvement since Christmas under new boss Kirk and they have won their last two matches in which they have kept back-to-back clean sheets.
Leicester City face a big challenge to retain their top flight status for 2023/2024 but Manchester City boss Taylor believes that the club have the right man in charge to help them achieve that goal whilst also commenting that The Foxes will be difficult opponents this evening.
“We expect them to be a decent opponent,” Taylor said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “They’re flying high after their win at the weekend which was a really important victory that gives them a good chance of staying in the league.
“I’ve known Willie for all of the time that I’ve been in the women’s game and he’s a good guy. He had some good success at Everton, took them to a cup final against us.
“I think they’ve got the right guy in there now to help and drive things forward. Again, it’s always going to be about recruitment, support and long-term vision.”
Manchester City go into action this evening just 72 hours after contesting their last match against West Ham United. Taylor and his squad have no issues with a quick turnaround.
He said “I love it as a coach and so do the players. You just want to move onto the next game whether it has been a good performance or not so good performance, a good result or not so good result. You don’t have much thinking time and sometimes too much reflecting can be harmful.
“Reflecting can be really important as well and we are looking at our pre-Leicester analysis where it will be heavily linked with what we did on Sunday.”
Manchester City’s FA Women’s Continental Tyres League Cup group stage fixture at Leicester City kicks-off at 7pm.