Barcelona no ‘free hit’ for Manchester City says Taylor | OneFootball

Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor says that UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage opponents FC Barcelona are the best team in the world but that doesn’t mean that his side have a ‘free hit’ when they face the Spanish giants.

The Cityzens take on the reigning European champions in their opening group stage game at The Joie Stadium this evening.

When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Manchester City boss Taylor said that Barcelona are the world’s best but that doesn’t mean that there’s less pressure on his own side to perform.

“I would say that they’re the best team in the world, certainly over the last four or five years,” Taylor said. “Before that, you’d say it was Lyon.

“Barcelona have really dominated in this last three or four-year period, so of course, I think they are [the best] but does that take the pressure off us? Not at all. It’s so hard how to quantify how you feel pressure or how you let it affect you because sometimes, it can do, there’s no doubt about that. We certainly don’t feel like we’ve got a free hit because we’ve worked tremendously hard to be here.

“This is our home tie and we will obviously play them away in December, so we feel that it’s a really good opportunity for us to see where we are. If we come up short in a one-off game, I’m not sure that I’d be too demanding or changing my view on where I think this team can go because Barcelona have shown that at any time, they can really take teams apart. We know they’ve got the ability to do that but always when I talk about the opposition, I like to switch it to us in terms of what we are capable of doing and that’s the focus.”

Barcelona were Manchester City’s last opponents in the UEFA Women’s Champions League’s latter stages in 2020/2021. The Spaniards knocked The Cityzens out of the competition at the quarter-final stage. Taylor believes that his side are stronger now than they were three-and-a-half years ago.

He said “I feel that we are stronger because we’ve had more time with the players. I wouldn’t want to be disrespectful to that team because that team we had contained Keira [Walsh], Sam Mewis, Janine Beckie, Gemma Bonner, some really good players within that.

“What we have had now is more time season-on-season, so we can be ready and prepared for this. Of course, we have made some adjustments in the summer, we have new players coming in and finding their way, but the game has moved on at such an alarming pace in three-and-a-half years. The women’s game has gone to really high levels.

“It’s a good place that we are in, we’ve made a good start to the season. We’ve achieved the first objective which was to get into the Champions League group stage and our objective now is to qualify for the quarter-finals.”

Manchester City come up against a Barcelona side that have scored 18 goals in their last two games and Taylor said that his team must defend well to give themselves a platform to build on.

He said “Of course, it’s always a solid foundation to start [with defending]. We’ve been really aggressive this season in our pressing, there have been some slight changes to what we were last season; more on the front-foot, especially without the ball.

“I find that really exciting and of course, sometimes, the best form of defence is attack but when we come up against these teams, we have to understand that at times, they’re going to have possession of the ball, maybe more than what we want. I think when we have the moments to engage and put them under pressure, that’s going to be really important for us.”

Manchester City’s UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage fixture against Barcelona kicks-off at 8pm this evening.