Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor says that winning the Barclays Women’s Super League title is an aspiration, however, there has been no talk of silverware amongst his players.
The Cityzens have recovered well from a slow start to the season and they have quietly gone about their business in the Barclays Women’s Super League. With nine games remaining, Taylor’s side find themselves just three points behind league leaders Manchester United.
Few tipped Manchester City to transform into title challengers but The Cityzens must now be taken very seriously. Despite increased noise from outside of the Manchester City camp, head coach Taylor says that there has been no title talk from within his group ahead of their latest match against Tottenham Hotspur this weekend.
“There’s no talk of the title, that’s the aspiration,” Taylor said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “When you set goals, you’ve got to make sure that you work backwards and deal with the now and the now for us is the next game. Once you start to overlook that and start talking too much about ‘the goal’, that is when you can start to take your eyes off it.
“For us, we don’t have to worry about that too much because we only have one league trophy amongst the trophies that we have won. If we had more than that, then there might be the potential of keeping the focus on the now but I don’t think that’s an issue with the players.
“The players are really pleased with where we have put ourselves in terms of the position and the worst thing that we could do now is not give the best of ourselves. We have spoken about it a lot that we have got ourselves in a healthy position. We want to look at each other at the end of the season and say that it was down to us and nobody else why we won or didn’t win, that’s very simple really.”
Manchester City’s latest opponents Tottenham Hotspur arrive at The Academy Stadium on the back of a seven-match losing run in the Barclays Women’s Super League. Taylor doesn’t feel like Spurs are far away from turning their poor results around.
He said “I think they’ll be safe (from relegation). There have been some changes and they have been supported; they’ve been able to bring Beth (England) in which is a good signing for the club.
“If you look at their results, they are not a million miles off; edged out in the FA Cup and very close to getting something out of the Manchester United game, so they’re not a million miles off. We never underestimate any opponent and we have high awareness of where their strengths are and areas that we can potentially exploit.
“I certainly think that they will be okay.”
Manchester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Tottenham Hotspur kicks-off at 2pm on Sunday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.
