Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor says that his side will look to keep things normalised as they prepare to face Chelsea at Kingsmeadow on Friday night.
The Cityzens come up against the current Barclays Women’s Super League leaders, however, a win would see Manchester City move level on points with Chelsea at the summit.
When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Manchester City boss Taylor said that there is no need to build up the importance of the game and that his side must look to normalise their approach.
“I don’t think we need to hype the game at all,” Taylor said. “For us, normalising it is the sensible thing because we know that when you play against Chelsea, Arsenal or Manchester United, the nerves are there anyway, it feels like a big game. You don’t need to stoke that up a little bit more.
“You see the best of us when we play in a calm manner, so getting the balance right is really important for us and normalising it.
“Of course, we know the importance of the game, we wanted to be in this position and we want to take our opportunity be we are under no illusion that it’s a tough game. Chelsea know that they can put a gap between us if they are to be successful in this game and we know what it means if we win.
“Keeping things normalised is important for us and making sure we are ready, which I think we are. We’ve come off the back of a busy period but so have they. We need to make sure we are ourselves. When we have been at our best is when we have played the way we play.”
While a win would see Manchester City pull level with Chelsea, avoiding defeat would also keep The Cityzens’ title dreams alive. Taylor went on to say that the aim is to go to Chelsea and win and nothing else has crossed his mind.
He said “There are different scenarios but we always play to win. We never go out with the intention of playing for a draw. Obviously, if the game goes into the latter stages and you’re in a situation, the strategy might change and if it’s holding onto a point, potentially it’s that.
“For us, it’s never been about not trying to win a game, we always try to play our very best. If we produce high levels of performance, we have a much better chance of winning. We know that if we win this game, it’s game on. If we draw the game, I haven’t really thought about that scenario, all we are thinking about is trying our very best to win.
“It is really difficult because we are playing against a champion that has been a champion for a number of seasons, so there’s huge respect there for what they do but we are in a situation where if you’d offered it to us at the start of the season, we’d have snatched your hand off. Chelsea were pretty good in the first eight or nine games, they gave away very little, lost two points which were against us. They set out a really early pace but more recently, we’ve started to claw things back and we’ve now got ourselves into a position. We need to try and maximise that on Friday.”
Manchester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Chelsea kicks-off at 7.15pm on Friday evening.