Gareth Taylor said that gaining another three points was the most important thing after Manchester City’s 4-0 victory over Leicester City at The Academy Stadium this afternoon.
The Cityzens never really got out of first gear against The Foxes but they didn’t have to as they made easy work of the newly-promoted Barclays FA Women’s Super League side.
Visiting goalkeeper Demi Lambourne had few saves to make in the game but she did have to pick the ball out of the net on four occasions, an indication of Manchester City’s clinical finishing.
When speaking in the post-match press conference, Manchester City boss Taylor admitted that his side had some good spells and some less impressive periods but ultimately, the win was what mattered.
“It was important to get the win at this point in the season,” Taylor said. “These games are not easy, Leicester are fighting for their lives, especially after Birmingham’s result yesterday which kind of brought them back into it slightly. They were looking to get anything out of the game that they could and make it difficult.
“We got the early goal which was from a great piece of play but I felt that between goals one and two, we went a bit loose then stepped it up again after the second goal, it was a good finish from Lauren (Hemp), a really good goal. Julie (Blakstad) tells me that it was deliberate for the cross (third goal) which I’m still to be convinced but the play before that was really good.
“Second half, I thought we were a little flat between 45 and 60 and I made three changes because of that to try to give us an injection of something. I was then pleased to get our first penalty in a long time. We didn’t work the goalkeeper enough in the second half and we had a few half-chances, moments. We just needed to trust the positional play a little bit more in the second half, especially when the spaces are really short. We need the players to be able to stick to the positional play a bit better to enable us to create better chances. Better quality of chances will give us a better chance of scoring.”
One of the positives from Manchester City’s performance was the link-up on the left between Hemp and Blakstad. Taylor said that he was relatively pleased with that partnership, especially early in the game.
He said “I spoke to Demi (Stokes) who played really well last week but I just thought today, if we got another attacking player at the top end of the pitch, it would help us.
“For the first 25 minutes, it worked really well, Alex (Greenwood) was finding Julie a lot and Lauren was causing problems on the inside, combining in that triangle with Caroline (Weir) as well.
“Again, it didn’t really ignite in the second half for one reason or another, probably more down to us than the opposition, nailing down the details a bit on our positional play. I thought it was not a nice situation for Leicester dealing with two attacking players like that, high energy, both left-footed, good quality and combining well. The initial part I thought was really impressive.”
Manchester City continue their battle for UEFA Women’s Champions League qualification next weekend when Brighton & Hove Albion are the visitors to The Academy Stadium.
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