Manchester City boss Taylor anticipating tough game against West Ham | OneFootball

Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor is anticipating another tough test when his side face West Ham United this evening.

The Cityzens travel to The Chigwell Construction Stadium to take on The Hammers in their latest Barclays Women’s Super League fixture.

When speaking to the media ahead of the match, Manchester City boss Taylor admitted that he has been impressed with the East Londoners this season.

“It’s a tough challenge, they’ve recruited some interesting players,” Taylor said. “We were able to watch their game against Arsenal on the way back [from Tottenham] and at one point, they were in really good control of that game. On another day, they turn that into three points or even a point.

“They’re very dangerous, fluid in attack and kind of aggressive in what they do. It’s now looking a more settled team for Rehanne [Skinner]. She probably would have had similar issues with the selection of her team at the weekend to what we had [given the international break].

“It’ll be a tough challenge for us.”

West Ham United were defeated 4-3 at Arsenal on Sunday despite scoring two early goals in Borehamwood. Taylor believes that The Hammers will have taken confidence from their performance in that game.

He said “I don’t think they’ll be disappointed, I think they’ll be really pleased. There will have been a lot of positives and so there should be because they did some really good things. They looked really aggressive from set plays, scored a couple from that area and she [Amber Tysiak] could have probably had a hat-trick of goals from set plays.

“There will be positives in there for West Ham and that’s certainly the way that I’d be looking at it. They probably weren’t expected to get much from that game but there were lots of opportunities for them to get something.”

Manchester City battled to a 2-1 victory at Tottenham Hotspur in their last game and Taylor believes that the challenge of West Ham United will be quite similar.

He said “I think we will see the same again, it’s looking like a very similar game.

“The pitches at this time of year are not conducive to us being able to play our normal game. I don’t want to use that as an excuse because our pitch that we train on isn’t great at the moment, so we are certainly getting used to those types of surfaces. When you go to Dagenham, Leyton Orient, they’re pitches used by multiple teams and you understand that they’re not going to be great.

“We expect it to be a really tough challenge against West Ham. They’re going to bring the fight, so we are going to have to show our quality, show moments where we are going to be there in the duels as much as we possibly can. We were a little bit inconsistent with that against Spurs, a little bit off in the duels but for the first goal, we were really good in the duels. I think it’s going to be a very similar game.”

Manchester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at West Ham United kicks-off at 7pm this evening.