Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor has expressed his desire to win the Barclays Women’s Super League this season to avoid such early participation in European competition next year.
The Cityzens exited the UEFA Women’s Champions League at the first hurdle last night after falling to a 1-0 Round 1 final defeat to Real Madrid.
Manchester City are yet to reach the group stage of the UEFA Women’s Champions League and head coach Taylor wants to avoid being involved in European club football’s premier competition so early on in the season in future years.
“It’s important to have more time with the players, especially for the integration of new players and for the existing players to become more familiar with those players as well,” Taylor said when speaking in the post-match press conference. “We just need time and unfortunately, in this format, you don’t get any time at all, especially with the EUROs and getting some players back earlier than others.
“It is very early on in the season to be playing this calibre of game but it’s the second season in a row that it has happened to us. We need to win the league this season, eliminate these early games, that’s what we will be looking to do.”
Reflecting on the defeat, Taylor said that the game was potentially lost in the midfield battle in the first half.
He said “We started the game quite well, we were on top and were controlling the play quite well but we just started to drop off too deep when Madrid got the ball. Their midfielders then started to cause us problems.
“I thought in second half, we were much better, we tweaked a few things, we left ourselves open a bit at the back when we were attacking that way. Their midfield was on top of ours a little bit more than we wanted in the first half and that caused us some problems.”
Manchester City will now go back to the training pitch as they prepare for the start of the new Barclays Women’s Super League season next month.
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