De Pauw wants Aston Villa to repeat pre-season performance against Manchester City | OneFootball

Aston Villa manager Robert de Pauw says that his side need to replicate their pre-season performance against Manchester City when the two teams meet at The Joie Stadium this weekend.

The Villans caused an upset in their final pre-season game. They defeated Manchester City 2-1 at their Bodymoor Heath training ground a little over a month ago.

When speaking to the media ahead of this weekend’s meeting, Aston Villa manager De Pauw said that his side need a repeat of that performance.

“We are clearly the underdog like it was against Chelsea, so it brings a different kind of pressure,” De Pauw said.

“We played them in pre-season and we know we can give them a lot of opposition, we showed that. Now, it is up to us to make sure we repeat that.”

Manchester City have battled their way through a challenging schedule which has seen them play four games in the last fortnight. De Pauw doesn’t believe that The Cityzens’ hectic period will benefit his side in any way.

He said “They started [Khadija] Shaw on the bench [against St. Pölten], so that maybe says something about how they’re looking at this game. I think they are taking us very seriously like they do every game in the WSL.

“Offensively, they are maybe the strongest team in the league, so we will have to be very focused in defence.”

Aston Villa are yet to deliver the complete performance this season. When they have excited with their attacking play, they have conceded goals while last weekend’s goalless draw against Leicester City reversed that theme. De Pauw was pleased to see his side claim a clean sheet against The Foxes but says that The Villans must be equally as sharp at the other end this weekend.

He said “We made the circle complete [with the clean sheet]. I think we deserved more from the four games. Against Leicester, it was very close, we should have killed the game off but the last part was missing. We have to make sure it is not missing against City because you don’t get a lot of chances against those opponents.”

Aston Villa’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Manchester City kicks-off at 12.15pm on Sunday afternoon.