Plenty of positives for Taylor from Manchester City’s victory over Everton | OneFootball

Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor says that there are plenty of positives to take from his side’s 3-2 victory over Everton at The Academy Stadium yesterday.

Khadija Shaw netted a brace while Lauren Hemp was also on target as The Cityzens established a three-goal lead. Everton fought back late on and goals from Lucy Hope and Leonie Maier reduced the arrears.

The result means that Manchester City have ended the 2022/2023 campaign unbeaten at home and head coach Taylor drew lots of positives from his side’s performance.

“I’m really pleased to win the game and continue the unbeaten record this season at home,” Taylor said when speaking to FAWSL Full-Time. “We’ve won the majority of those games as well which is a real positive.

“It was always going to be goal difference which is pretty hard to take, especially with the amount of chances that we have created throughout the season.

“There were some real positives out there, you probably saw some things that we did really well and some things that we potentially need to improve on. The game could have been out of sight when we were 3-0 up. We had lots of chances and it could have been five or six. Everton are really dangerous in terms of trying to exploit the spaces that we leave.

“I’m pleased. I was really looking forward to this game because I knew that Everton would come out and engage and try to build from the back. We knew exactly what they were going to do and we knew exactly what we needed to do. For large parts, I thought we did that pretty well.”

Manchester City end the season having kept just one clean sheet in their last 13 games. While the defensive record must be improved next season, Taylor believes that it simply needs more work in a full pre-season.

He said “We have good individual moments defensively that you see. I thought Alex (Greenwood) was very good on the front foot. It is more difficult for her to be on the front foot as much when we switch to three at the back because we are obviously missing a player there while we are trying to get another player into midfield to allow us to maybe score more goals.

“It is just about a continuation of the work. The game never changes, it always highlights both ends of the pitch; scoring goals and not conceding as many.

“We continue to carry on working. The good thing is that we are working with a good young group who are receptive to being coached.

“It’s fine margins. Although we’ve come up short, we are not as far away as what we thought and this new group have done really well in that space this season. When you factor in the lack of games you have, the lack of time you have in pre-season to work with the group, hopefully, next season we will be in a much better place.”

Manchester City’s players will now enjoy a period of rest before many will link-up with their respective nations for the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2023.