Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor says that he is expecting a tough game against an aggressive Leicester City outfit this afternoon.
The Cityzens play host to The Foxes at The Joie Stadium. Manchester City won the reverse fixture 1-0 while Leicester City were victorious on penalties in a FA Women’s Continental Tyres League Cup match at The Joie Stadium before Christmas.
Leicester City are known for their aggressive style of play and Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor believes that the East Midlands side will be tough opponents this afternoon.
“It’s a tough one,” Taylor said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “Certainly, after Willie [Kirk] took over in the back end of last season, they became a different proposition.
“They’re very aggressive in what they do, it doesn’t always work for them but I think they’ve realised that this is the way for them to go; to be as aggressive as they can be, to try and impose themselves on the opponent. Sometimes it works and sometimes, it can create issues because it’s so difficult to take care of everything in the game. If you want to play in a particular way, it could leave you vulnerable elsewhere.
“I’m expecting a tough challenge. In the game at The King Power, they were very aggressive and very compact in player-for-player scenarios which left quite a bit of space in-behind which we should have exploited better. We came away with a win, which could have been more.
“We know that we will have to be at our best but we have been playing well. There have been some good performances, good results and we are back at home which is good. We are looking forward to the challenge ahead.”
Leicester City are a team that like to take risks with their style of play. Despite Manchester City being bang in form and scoring lots of goals, Taylor doesn’t anticipate any change in approach from The Foxes the afternoon.
He said “We will be prepared for whatever Leicester do, whether they play a back-five, back-four, back-three.
“Of course, it is very difficult for them to control all of the spaces. If they leave them in-front or behind, it’s hard to do that over a period of 95 minutes.
“I don’t see any reason why they would [change] because I think it has brought them a decent level of success. Willie is correct in terms of what he is saying about ‘high risk and high reward’ but that’s what we are anticipating. They will try to make it difficult but we need to try and exploit it where we can.”
Manchester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Leicester City kicks-off at 1pm. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
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