Tottenham Hotspur Women 0-1 Manchester City Women – Taylor’s View

Manchester City’s 1-0 win at Spurs puts them two points behind their opponents and will leapfrog the Londoners if they beat Reading at the Academy Stadium in midweek. A scrappy goal by Caroline Weir was enough for the blues to secure all three points and manager Gareth Taylor was happy that the blues were able to ground out a result.

“We spoke about winning ugly and that was pretty ugly. Even the goal was scruffy, but we managed to get it over the line. It doesn’t have to be pretty,” said the manager who came under intense scrutiny for his teams’ performances in the early stage of the season.

The blues have since turned their fortunes around and won the League Cup last weekend, beating Chelsea 3-1 at Plough Lane and City turned their attention to trying to qualify for the Champions League.

“It was an important win against an opponent in and around us,” he said. “It was really pleasing, especially going into these next games on the back of our Continental Cup success last week.” City have seemed to perform better in the second half of recent matches and, although Taylor didn’t reveal what the secret was, he did briefly touch on it in his post-match press conference.

“We tweaked a few things and did it slightly better in the second half and just about did enough to win the game. We’ll take it for what it is at this stage of the season. At the end of the day, in a couple of weeks’ time, the result will say 1-0 and no-one will go on about the performance. It was important to get the win, however it came.”

Taylor also addressed goalkeeper Ellie Roebuck’s situation after the keeper was substituted following a clash with Ashleigh Neville. “We had to make sure she was okay. She had some clouded vision and we couldn’t take the risk. I don’t know if it is concussion. She took a facial knock yesterday, which was just a graze, but our doctors and medics will make sure she’s okay.

“You can never be sure about concussion, but why take the risk? We had to take her off.”

The blues will be hoping Roebuck is fit for the home match against Reading, and the blues also face a home FA Cup tie against Everton at the weekend as they go in search of their second piece of silverware this season.