Isobel Christiansen says the confidence is flowing at Manchester City after they extended their unbeaten run to nine games with FA WSL Continental Tyres Cup victory at Everton.
Toni Duggan and Georgia Stanway scored to book defending champions City’s quarter-final spot, as they made it four wins from four in this year’s competition.
Everton 0-2 Manchester City
FAWSL Continental Tyres Cup
Group 2
Select Security Stadium
Thursday 28 August 2015
And England Under-23s midfielder Christiansen – who says the team will fight tooth and nail to defend their title – wants the run to continue against Liverpool on Sunday.
“We knew a win would see us through to the quarters, so that's what we've done,” she said. “To keep our unbeaten run up is massive, we just want to keep winning, to keep moving forward and gather momentum.
“I think at times we played some good football, it's a shock to the system coming here and playing on a 3G pitch, but we adapted well.
“The tempo dropped a little bit second-half but we were confident in our ability to get the ball down and play, we could create and cause problems and luckily that's what we've done in the end.”
City created a string of chances from the off, but it took until 20 minutes for Duggan to break the deadlock, running onto Christiansen’s through ball, turning inside Danielle Lea and firing into the bottom corner.
Jill Scott clipped the post on 26 minutes after turning Ellie Stewart and three minutes later combined with Duggan, only for the striker to hit the same post.
Chances were fewer after the break but Steph Houghton clattered the crossbar on 83 minutes with a dipping free-kick.
And Stanway sealed victory two minutes later, racing onto a long ball to score her first City goal.
But Everton’s Emily Hollinshead insists, despite a fourth consecutive defeat in the competition, it has been a good learning curve.
“It’s good to compete against a WSL1 side – that’s the direction we want to be going in,” she said.
“We contained them for large amounts of the game, we had a couple of chances and we defended well throughout, but in the end the better team won on the night.
“We went into half-time 1-0 down and the manager’s said to us we’re still in the game. We’ve come out for the second-half and we’ve kept on pressing them but unfortunately we couldn’t get the goal.
“We pressed the centre-backs, and forced mistakes, but we couldn’t get back into the game.”
