Gareth Taylor said: “There is nothing for me to consider,” when asked whether his position as manager of Manchester City was in question after a 4-0 home defeat by Chelsea.
“Until I’m told differently I’ll continue to work hard. I’m working so hard in this period,” he said. “Obviously with a lot of constraints with the injuries we have but the players today showed me that we are capable of playing the way we want to play and building the way we want to play, we just need that little bit of good fortune and to be a little bit more ruthless in attack.
“Of course, we need to be better in the errors that we make, but as long as I can see the positives even when we are really short of a number of key players in the playing squad, I think nothing changes in my mind.”
Describing the defeat and the 5-0 loss to Arsenal as “freakish results”, Taylor insisted the performance against Chelsea was strong enough to have on another day swung the result their way. “If you look at the stats, for possession, the opportunities and shots on goal, they were similar [in the Arsenal game], I think it was the same today, we dominated possession.
“We look at the performances, usually the performance leads to the result, unfortunately on this occasion it hasn’t done. On another day, without the errors, we stay in that game and we give ourselves a chance to win it.”
Karima Taieb was at fault for the opening goal, in the second minute. Taylor said of the goalkeeper: “We’ve just got to rally around her and make sure she’s OK. She’s performed really well for us for the majority of games this season and we have to look at that instead of single moments chastising people for single mistakes. It’s football. It’s rare that a goal goes in where a finger isn’t pointed.”
The Chelsea manager, Emma Hayes, praised Erin Cuthbert for “taking one for the team” in man-marking Lauren Hemp and nullifying City’s most potent threat. “I mean, wow,” she said. “Erin Cuthbert did an unbelievable number on her. She was exceptional. She took one for the team and she did that better than I could have even expected.”
Hayes added: “We played like champions today. The team delivered a top, top performance on the back of having a lot of travel.”
