Manchester United boss Skinner calls for more aggression ahead of League Cup tie | OneFootball

Manchester United head coach Marc Skinner says that his side must be more aggressive with the ball when they face Arsenal in the semi-finals of the Subway Women’s League Cup this evening.

The Red Devils travel to Borehamwood to face The Gunners in the last-four. The two sides previously met at the Emirates Stadium in the Barclays Women’s Super League 11 days’ ago, that game having ended goalless.

When speaking to the media in the pre-match press conference, Manchester United boss Skinner highlighted the need for attacking improvements this time around.

“When we went down to 10 players, it became increasingly difficult but up until that point, we needed to be more aggressive with the ball,” Skinner said. “That’s what I expect from this game; I want us to show our qualities with the ball, we have unbelievable footballers but that doesn’t just come from the front, it comes from the back and with the confidence to build and be aggressive.

“The game will look slightly different because the pitches are totally different. The Emirates is obviously a huge arena, huge pitch whereas Borehamwood is smaller and tighter, so it does give a different feel to the game.

“We have to do things slightly different but I want us to keep the same defensive mentality and I want to see more collectively in attack.”

Five different players got their names on the scoresheet as Manchester United defeated Burnley 5-0 in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup fourth round on Sunday. There is increased competition for places, especially in attack, but Skinner says that his job isn’t about keeping his players happy.

He said “My job isn’t to keep players happy, it’s to give them opportunity. Happiness should never just be about whether they play or not, it should be about the right opportunity to be able to play. Players come in and out of form but the whole reason why we have gone aggressive in the market in the forward line is because I need variants. 

“In recent years, we’ve always had invasion and be able to build and go and invade. We lost that a little bit and so, I wanted to get that back. The whole reason we went aggressive was to be different and have variants.

“It’s not about me keeping them happy, it’s about me working with them to keep their happiness around the game. I want them to work hard and I’ve seen in training that the finishing has gone up two or three notches because there’s natural competition.”

Manchester United’s Subway Women’s League Cup tie at Arsenal kicks-off at 7pm.