After double, City women set sights on the treble...
HAVING won a domestic double last year, City Women are now targeting a treble.
Nick Cushing’s team swept all before them in the WSL last season - going unbeaten on their way to an emphatic first title and added the Continental Cup to their trophy cabinet.
Despite their success, England international Izzy Christiansen says there is a lot of room for improvement.
“As much as we were delighted that we won the double, we were by no means individually or collectively anywhere near what we know that we can perform at,” she said.
“The work we’ve done on the training pitch, there’s still loads to see from these players and this team so we’re excited at the fact that we can we go one better and win three trophies this year.”
First up in 2017 is the continuation of the Champions League.
City take on Fortuna Hjorring in the first leg of their quarterfinal tonight, with European heavyweights Wolfsburg or Lyon awaiting in the semi-finals.
Kosovare Asllani, who picked up some tips from friends that have played the Danish team recently, believes it is realistic for City to target the title.
“I definitely think so - we’ve got a strong squad,” she said.
“We can’t get ahead of ourselves, we need to focus on Fortuna Hjorring first but we all know that if we get through that game we play either Lyon or Wolfsburg, which are teams that are up there and have been playing finals almost every year.
“We’re excited. We know it’s going to be tough but on our best days I think we could give any team in the world a really good game.” PEP Guardiola and Jose Mourinho have been the best of enemies for the last seven years – but there is one thing they agree on.
And it is bad news for fans of both City and United.
Mourinho last week warned United fans that the days when one club could dominate English football, as the Reds did in the Nineties and Noughties, are over.
And Guardiola has a similar message for Blues supporters who hope that they could have their own era of supremacy.
He predicts that the Premier League is now so even in terms of player quality and financial resource that the title will switch hands from year to year.
And that is why he has been at pains to play down expectations at City in his debut season. Guardiola says football is increasingly comparable to his two other great sporting loves, golf and NBA basketball, where the dominance of one golfer, or one team, is now rare.
“In golf it’s so difficult to see one player win two or three games in a row,” said Guardiola.
“There was a period when Tiger Woods arrived and was able to win ten or nine, and everybody was in love, but now it is impossible to see that.
“That shows how difficult it is. Everybody can win, and the future in football and basketball is that this is going to happen.
“In the NBA there was a period when Michael Jordan won three in three, and then with the LA Lakers with Kobe Bryant.
“But two years ago it was Golden State, and then Cleveland.
“In football this is going to happen, and in sport in general. Today the competition, and the competitors, the players are much, much better. “Everybody has a lot of money to spend, everybody knows everybody – we know the secrets of the others, and you cannot hide secrets from the opponents.” That echoed the words of Mourinho, who said recently: “There is no more dominancy, and you will see that for the next 10 or 20 years.” Guardiola says the closeness and intensity of the competition are the reasons he pays such close attention to detail. “I would like to allow the players to eat what they want, do what they want,” he said. “But in the past we didn’t play this amount of games we are now playing, and not in this high intensity. “Players used to run seven or eight kilometres per game now it’s 12 or 13 kilometres – almost double. “And the energy we spend is higher and you need to recover that energy. The little details make an influence in the food and the way you rest, because you have to try to control as much as possible what we control.” Pep Guardiola