‘I have belief’: Cushing feels Manchester City can beat Chelsea in Europe | OneFootball

Nick Cushing has said Manchester City’s performance in their League Cup final defeat on Saturday gives him belief that they can beat Chelsea in the Women’s Champions League on Wednesday, as the teams’ run of four consecutive meetings continues.

Manchester City lost 2-1 in Cushing’s first game back in interim charge, five days after the sacking of Gareth Taylor, and Cushing’s team will now host Chelsea in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final, before a crucial league meeting at the Etihad Stadium on 23 March and then, on 27 March, the reverse leg of their European tie.

“I have the belief that we’re going to win on Wednesday, and with some slight adjustments and maybe some rotation, we can make sure we fall the right side of the result,” Cushing said despite the defeat at Pride Park on Saturday, where Yui Hasegawa’s late own goal gave Chelsea the first major piece of silverware available this season. Cushing said he felt they had “done enough to win” the final.

“I want this team to be a threat and to believe that it can be a threat however the game goes, whoever we play. And I hope you could see we had multiple threats in their box. At half-time we were six corners to zero. I’ve seen enough to know we can be competitive in the next three games.”

In Cushing’s six-year spell in charge at City from 2014 to 2020, they won six major trophies: one league title, three League Cups and two FA Cups.

Asked what differences she had noticed in Cushing’s team compared to how City played under Taylor, the Chelsea manager, Sonia Bompastor, said: “Most of the big principles we could see under Gareth were the ones we could see today with Nick,” although she added that she expects that to change in the coming days.

Cushing felt “you could see some slight adjustments in the way we want to play, that made us more of a threat” and he said: “I thought our wingers were our main threat. Mary Fowler looked really dangerous when she got face-up and was dribbling and driving into defensive areas, and Aoba Fujino was, again, dangerous.”

Chelsea remain unbeaten under Bompastor with 26 wins from her 28 games in charge of the London club.

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