Kirk highlights the importance of Leicester City killing the game off against Bristol City

Leicester City head coach Willie Kirk says that latest opponents Bristol City always have a chance of punishing you if given the opportunity to do so.

The Foxes face the Barclays Women’s Super League’s bottom club at The King Power Stadium this afternoon.

Bristol City are fighting for their lives at the bottom of the table. The Robins have shown that they can punish teams at times this season and Leicester City boss Kirk has highlighted the importance of killing the game off this afternoon.

“They’ve got so many attacking threats in terms of pace; Lisa Evans, Ffion Morgan, Jamie-Lee Napier, Amalie Thestrup,” Kirk said. “We are looking at how many pace threats they’ve got and if you don’t kill the game against Bristol, they’ll always have a chance to be in it because of that.

“You’ll never control a game for 90 minutes but you have to control it as much as possible because they can hit you on the counter and be lethal. Aston Villa had 36 shots against them and they came out with a 2-2 draw because Villa were never clinical enough and didn’t kill off the game. If you leave them in the game, they will definitely punish you at some stage.

“I think they will give us the ball and I think that actually ties in with their pace threats on the counter. I’m sure they’ll allow us to play in certain areas of the pitch. They’re a young, hungry team with a point to prove and they’re running out of games; we know what that feels like having been in that position last year. This will be one of the games that they have targeted to get points from and they really need to. It’s a must-win game for both teams.”

Leicester City go into the game as favourites and Kirk says that an expectancy to win has been placed on the players ahead of the fixture.

He said “We should win, the pressure on the players is to win and we said it in the huddle at the end of the Birmingham game. The players have always responded well to pressure when we’ve put it on them. It’s not healthy to put pressure like that on them every week but this is a week where we have and we should be winning that game if we perform. That’s not disrespectful to Bristol, it’s because I think that player-for-player, we’ve got a better team than them but that doesn’t win you anything. 

“The players have had to train really hard this week to prepare themselves and to prepare each other. They’ll take the pressure onboard and hopefully, turn it into three points.”

Leicester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Bristol City kicks-off at 3pm this afternoon. Tickets are on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.