Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor believes that his side will be ready to adapt to playing on an artificial pitch at Durham this weekend.
The Cityzens travel to the North East to contest an Adobe Women’s FA Cup fourth round tie. Durham’s Maiden Castle home is very much their fortress; the tight layout of the ground, the team’s physical playing style and the artificial playing surface have created difficult conditions for visiting teams.
When speaking ahead of this weekend’s clash, Manchester City head coach Taylor said that his side have not adapted their training plan in preparation for the match. They could look to implement some changes ahead of the match but regardless of the training programme, Taylor believes that his side will be ready for the challenge.
“I think over the next couple of days, we will have good conversations with the players around what they feel comfortable with,” Taylor said when discussing his side’s training plan. “We have an idea [of what to expect as coaching staff] but we are not the ones that are going out and playing. We will have good conversations, we will have a slight hybrid mix of our normal conditions to just get used to it a little bit.
“It’s so hard to predict. Even with the synthetic surfaces, each one is different; some are really well-maintained, some have more of the synthetic grass on them, some have more of the crumb and others don’t. It’s difficult in that respect, you don’t know exactly what you are going to get. It can throw up different things, it makes the game a bit faster at times and the bounce can be unpredictable.
“Even if we weren’t to practice on it and went straight into the warm-up, I think the players could adapt really quickly but we are trying to get a mix of it in our preparation.”
Going on to discuss Durham, Taylor acknowledged some of the factors behind the club’s strong home record and was full of praise for what The Wildcats have achieved over the last decade.
He said “They’re a difficult team to play against on their home surface. They make it really difficult for their opponents and they are quite good at breaking away on the counter attack. We will need to be really smart with how we play and how we control those kind of situations.
“When I first came into this job, I knew Durham were a team that were always really well-regarded at that stage. They always seem to have this ability to develop really good young players. Lots of players have moved on from Durham to various clubs, it seems to be something they do very well.”
Manchester City’s Adobe Women’s FA Cup fourth round tie at Durham kicks-off at 12.30pm on Sunday afternoon.
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