‘The message was to play the full game’ – Miquel reacts to Leicester City’s loss at Manchester United | OneFootball

Leicester City manager Amandine Miquel was disappointed with her side’s first half performance as they went down 2-0 to Manchester United at the Leigh Sports Village on Sunday afternoon.

Melvine Malard and Leah Galton netted the goals for the hosts in the first half as Leicester City suffered another away defeat.

When speaking to the media after the match, Leicester City boss Miquel admitted that the first half performance cost her side.

“I think they did better in the second half than the first half,” Miquel said. “We made a few defensive transition mistakes, we were not aggressive enough, we were not covering each other and we were a bit too far from each other, so it gave them clear opportunities that we could have avoided.”

Miquel went on to say that she wanted a full performance from her side but travel off the back of the international break may have taken its toll.

She said “The message was to play the full game; don’t pick the game and don’t pick the half you’re playing because we don’t do that. We’re not a team in the position to relax for 45 minutes. Some of the players have had a lot of travel [during the international break] and we were not focused enough to play well in the first half.”

Japanese international midfielder Yuka Momiki had a stand-out game for The Foxes and Miquel was pleased with the player’s efforts despite having only returned to England along with teammate Saori Takarada in the hours leading up to the match.

She said “She’s on a high moment, beating the USA and scoring a goal. They came back yesterday, there’s an eight-hour difference, a 22-hour flight, so obviously, we’re taking no risks and making sure that we don’t overload them.”

Leicester City are back in action on Wednesday evening when they take on Chelsea at Kingsmeadow.