Miedema’s stunning strike helps Manchester City to victory in WSL thriller with Villa | OneFootball

When you are in a sticky patch of league form and looking for inspiration, there are few better players to provide it than Vivianne Miedema. The Women’s Super League’s all-time leading goalscorer delivered a timely reminded of her prowess with a stunning long-range strike that helped Manchester City win a six-goal thriller away at Aston Villa.

City had lost three of their past four WSL games, which was at odds with their previous form of just one defeat and 21 victories in 23 WSL games, and Aston Villa’s interim manager Shaun Goater said: “I know in the past couple of games, they’ve looked off it – I just had this feeling they wouldn’t be off it against us, not to that degree.”

He was not wrong, as a fit-again Miedema found the type of performance that the biggest players tend to produce when their teams need them most.

However, City still made a terrible start as the Netherlands forward Chasity Grant opened the scoring for Villa inside six minutes on the counterattack. Grant latched on to Sarah Mayling’s ball down the right channel and emphatically fired past Ayaka Yamashita, as the hosts’ tactics worked. Villa, under the interim management of the former Manchester City men’s team player and former City women’s team assistant manager Goater for the final time, were coping with City’s threats well in the first half, causing problems whenever they broke forward.

Their new head coach, Natalia Arroyo, who was appointed on Wednesday but was watching this fixture remotely while her visa is being finalised, will have been pleased with the attacking endeavour her side showed but will know there are some issues to address defensively, after a game that neither team’s back four will have been particularly proud of. No moment emphasised that better than City’s equaliser, which came when Dan Turner’s loose pass rolled straight into the path of Miedema to slot in the leveller.

Miedema’s second goal, however, was almost unstoppable, as she turned with style and curled a delightful strike into the top corner that will likely go on the eventual list of contenders for the WSL’s goal of the season. It was Miedema’s third goal in her past two WSL games, helping to fill the void left by the absence of the Jamaica striker Khadija Shaw – who, encouragingly for City fans, made her own return from injury as a second-half substitute.

Taylor has been managing Miedema’s match minutes carefully and said: “The biggest challenge with Viv, because of the type of injury she had, is trying to get her into a good place where she feels confident to be able to play and get on the pitch as much as possible. Since Christmas she has been good.”

Villa pulled level inside the first minute of the second half when Laia Aleixandri inadvertently angled Kirsty Hanson’s cross into her own net, but the Australia forward Mary Fowler’s deflected effort at the other end soon made it 3-2 and Jess Park tucked home Kerstin Casparij’s clever right-wing cross to make the points safe for City.

The victory came in Gareth Taylor’s 100th WSL match in charge of Manchester City, and moved them back up to second in the table, albeit they have played an additional fixture compared with all of their title rivals.

Header image: [Photograph: Peter Cziborra/Action Images/Reuters]