‘It won’t be easier than usual’ – Manchester City test still tough for Leicester City says Miquel | OneFootball

Leicester City manager Amandine Miquel says that her side’s latest Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Manchester City will be made no easier by The Cityzens’ current injury crisis.

The Foxes face Nick Cushing’s side at The King Power Stadium on Sunday afternoon.

Manchester City will travel to the East Midlands with a lengthy injury list but Leicester City boss Miquel expects nothing other than an extremely tough assignment.

“They will probably look slightly different, so we will try to anticipate who will play and how they will play,” Miquel said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “Even though they have injuries, they still have a good squad overall, so they’re good players. We also know when you have injuries, it is the moment for others to show themselves. It won’t be easier than usual, it’ll just be different.

“We have focused on us. We want to be stronger defensively and make sure that we keep the threats offensively. We want to put in the best performance that we can on Sunday.”

Leicester City were defeated 5-1 at Arsenal last time out. Reflecting on that loss, Miquel emphasised the need for her side to rediscover their defensive resilience.

She said “A 5-1 loss to a team like Arsenal is not something that is surprising. You try to do your best every game but we definitely struggled against what I believe is the best team in the second half of the season.

“Even though we struggled, I still think we could have reduced the number of goals conceded. We have worked on that this week because it was one of our strongest points in the first half of the season. Now, we are scoring more but we’ve got the problem further down [in defence]. The intention is to keep scoring more goals but to reduce the number that we concede.

“We’ve worked on very simple things this week that could have helped us to avoid conceding the goals. We have to be really consistent with our defensive organisation so that we don’t give away such easy goals.”

Leicester City could secure Barclays Women’s Super League safety this weekend but Miquel says that she is not looking at the rankings ahead of the game.

She said “We will look at the points after the last game and hopefully, we will have enough. It’s good to focus on us; it’s a good opportunity for us to do something this season after all of the struggles and challenges that we have had. If it’s not this weekend, we still have two more games for us to get a really good overall result.”

Leicester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Manchester City kicks-off at 3pm on Sunday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.