Manchester City preparing for ‘most motivated and most aggressive’ Chelsea says Cushing | OneFootball

Manchester City’s interim head coach Nick Cushing says that his side are preparing for the most difficult game against Chelsea.

The Cityzens have travelled to South West London ahead of the second leg of their UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final tie this evening. Manchester City lead 2-0 from the first leg and they have a fighting chance of reaching the last-four.

Despite his side being ahead in the tie, Manchester City’s interim boss Cushing knows that there is still plenty of work to do. When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Cushing explained that The Cityzens are preparing to come up against the most motivated and aggressive form of Chelsea in the return leg.

“I think ultimately, we need to prepare for the most difficult game that we are going to face,” Cushing said. “We know how important this competition is for Chelsea, we know what a great team they are and where they are in the league.

“They played their cards a little bit [in the league game] on Sunday in the sense of how fit, how strong they finished and the players that they brought off the bench. We sort of know the majority of the team without knowing everybody; we know the majority of the team that we are going to be playing against.

“We know that Chelsea are going to be incredibly up for the game, incredibly motivated. When you bring in a manager that has previously won the Champions League and from the most successful women’s team that has ever been, you are making your intentions known that the Champions League is probably the aim.

“We know that they are 2-0 down, we know that we’re going to face the most motivated and most aggressive form of Chelsea.”

One could argue that Manchester City must settle quickly at Stamford Bridge, however, Cushing does not necessarily see the first 20 minutes of the game being the most important.

He said “I don’t really see it like that because the last 20 minutes were the most important part of the last game. Of course, the start of the game is going to be really intense, it’s going to be fairly frantic, it’s going to be Chelsea trying to score early but you could see that a lot of our threat on Sunday was when Chelsea were attacking us.

“We know we are a threat, I believe we can be a threat in every phase of the game. If we can suffer like we did in the end stages of the Champions League [game] and we can score like we did on 81-82 minutes, we can be a threat in the game whether we concede a goal or we don’t.

“We know if we score, it makes the game more difficult for Chelsea, but we know that this team is a top team. They’re not in the position that they’re in at the top of the league with a League Cup in the cabinet [for no reason]. We are playing against the best women’s team in England at the moment. We’ve got to embrace that and attack it.”

Manchester City’s UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final, second leg tie at Chelsea kicks-off at 8pm this evening.