Aston Villa boss Carla Ward says that she is expecting a very different game against Manchester City compared to the reverse fixture.
The two sides meet at The Academy Stadium this lunchtime to contest their latest Barclays Women’s Super League fixture.
Aston Villa defeated Manchester City 4-3 in a rollercoaster game at Villa Park on the opening day of the season. It was something of a shock result as The Villans put down a real marker for future success.
When speaking in the pre-match press conference ahead of today’s meeting, Aston Villa boss Ward said that she believes that it will be a very different game.
“From a neutral point of view, it was great but for me, I was emotionally drained come 90 minutes,” Ward said when reflecting on September’s fixture. “It was an unbelievable game of football and I have watched it back a few times because it was genuinely a great game.
“I think it’ll be very different, Manchester City have progressed massively, as have we. It’ll be a very different game but it is two teams that want to play football, two teams that want to play in the right way so I’d like to think it’ll be a good game.”
Aston Villa lost their most recent games against ‘top four’ sides quite heavily. The Villans lost 5-0 at Manchester United before being defeated 4-1 at home to Arsenal. Ward said that positives were taken from the Arsenal fixture but the events of the Manchester United game cannot be repeated.
She said “There were a lot of contributing factors but I’d like to think that we are now in a better place.
“We played some tremendous stuff against Arsenal but there are some key moments where top teams can hurt you. We were disappointed with the Manchester United game, I didn’t feel like we gave any account of ourselves so it is really important to delve into that and make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
Aston Villa’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Manchester City kicks-off at 11.30am.
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