Taylor: City must ‘earn the right’ to retain Conti Cup | OneFootball

Gareth Taylor says Manchester City must ‘earn the right’ to continue our defence of the Continental Cup ahead of a semi-final clash with Arsenal.

We travel down to Meadow Park on Wednesday 8 February to face the Gunners, with kick-off scheduled for 19:15 (UK).

City are aiming to extend our unbeaten run in all competitions to 17 matches, and claim the Conti Cup for the fifth time in our history.

However, the boss has pointed out that there is still plenty of work to do if we’re to reach March’s final at Selhurst Park.

“I’d love to go back there [to Selhurst Park], but we have to work tremendously hard to get there,” the boss explained in his pre-match press conference.

“We have to get there and earn the right to be there and retain our trophy.

“We know how hard that is and that we’ll have good moments and moments where we potentially suffer.

“That’s the enjoyable part and something we need to look forward to.

“We’ve gone on this really good run, and I think it's really impressive even when you think about the change in the summer.

“We had a lot of new players coming in, it took a small period to adapt and we struggled a little bit at first without a proper pre-season but now the team’s playing to really high levels.

“16 unbeaten is outstanding, and to think about with only two draws in that too, the players deserve a lot of credit for that.”

The boss also provided an update on the squad’s shape ahead of an important week for City.

Alanna Kennedy didn’t travel down with the squad for Saturday’s 2-0 Barclays Women’s Super League win over Leicester due to a slight issue, but the boss confirmed that she was back in training.

He also shed some further light on the recoveries of fellow defenders Esme Morgan and Demi Stokes.

“I think everyone’s looking really good, we’ve gained an extra day in preparation [on Arsenal] but obviously we have to make the long journey down [to Meadow Park].

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“We’ve got a couple of players checking late on, we lost Demi [Stokes] at the weekend quite late on and Esme’s [Morgan] not been available as well.

“Alanna [Kennedy] we decided to leave in the north due to a slight issue but she trained fine today.

“It’s a good time for us, availability is pretty good while also allowing a few players to go out on loan.

“The options are good, but they can change within 24 or 48 hours.”