Gareth Taylor has backed his side to score enough goals to overhaul Chelsea on the final day of the Women’s Super League season. Manchester City are level on points with the champions but their title rivals have a better goal difference of two. City make the trip to Aston Villa while Chelsea visit Manchester United.
Taylor, however, is confident his side can recover from the disappointing 2-1 home defeat to Arsenal 11 days ago to turn on the style against Carla Ward’s Villa side, despite the absence of Khadija Shaw, the WSL’s top scorer, through injury. Lauren Hemp is fifth in the scoring charts. “You’ve seen with this team, they can score three or four goals in the space of five or six minutes,” he said. “They are more than capable. That doesn’t mean you’re able to go and do it on the weekend, there are many factors that go into that. It’s about me constantly realigning them with what we have to do. The more we’ve done that this season the better we’ve been.”
City have scored four goals or more in 10 games across all competitions this season and Taylor says the signs have been promising going into what will be Ward’s final game as the Villa manager. The Manchester City players met up on Thursday having seen Chelsea secure a narrow 1-0 win over Tottenham on Wednesday evening.
“For me it’s the feeling when we got together for the team meeting, the result last night was good for us and gives us a clear objective of what we have to do at the weekend, there will be a lot of toing and froing on the day,” said Taylor, aware that goings-on at Old Trafford will have an influence. “There are a lot of things to manage. We need to concentrate on ourselves and not take our eye off the ball. Let’s start as impressively as we can.”
Despite their potency in many games this season, City’s WSL goal tally of 59 lags behind Chelsea’s 65, a deficit that would settle the title if the teams were level on goal difference. Taylor’s side have conceded only 14 this term, a sharp contrast with last season, when they finished with 25 goals against. A staunch defence has contributed to the goalkeeper Khiara Keating becoming the youngest player to win the golden glove award with nine clean sheets in 21 games. Taylor praised Keating’s talent and the “solid foundation” that had allowed her to show her best form for the club.
“It says a lot about her and how she has come into the team and imposed herself, there was a lot of conversation at the beginning of the season around her being so young and new to the WSL but I think the way she’s adapted to everything she’s faced this season has been really good,” he said. “Of course there are some real contributing factors that have allowed her to be her very best but of course her talent has taken her to where she is.”
