‘Play To Our Potential’ – Morgan's Pre-Man City Message

- Jonathan Morgan spoke to the media in his pre-match press conference
- The LCFC Women manager looked ahead to the WSL clash with Manchester City
- Leicester face the Citizens in a 2pm kick-off at King Power Stadium on Sunday
- Morgan shared his thoughts on returning to league action and the opposition

The 2pm kick-off sees both sides return to Barclays FA Women’s Super League action following Continental Tyres League Cup fixtures in midweek. While the Manchester club recorded a 3-0 victory over Durham, the Foxes lost out to Everton in their home clash at Pirelli Stadium.

It was a much improved second half display in Burton, which included a first goal of the season for Ashleigh Plumptre, but having trailed by two at the break, Leicester gave themselves a mountain to climb to get off the mark for the campaign.

Still searching for a complete performance across the full 90 minutes on game day, Morgan believes it is just around the corner based on the training patterns and learnings the players have undertaken across the last week.

“It’s a little bit of mentality, it’s a little bit of naivety,” Morgan commented in his virtual pre-match press conference on Thursday afternoon. “We work on that here. In our training sessions, we set a lot of parameters to replicate in-game scenarios, how to handle certain parts of the game at certain times.

“It’s definitely something we are getting better at. We’re becoming a lot more consistent and it’s just that we’ve got to try and get on the board now with a win, or get a point, and then we’ll be fine.

“It’s just something we keep repeating to the girls, keep talking about understanding why they are not stringing together two halves as consistently as we would like. We just work hard on the training pitch to fix it.”

Jess Camwell made her first appearance of 2021/22 in midweek and the 18-year-old is one of a number of youngsters to make up the Foxes’ squad this season. They all have a bright future ahead, according to Morgan, and leaning on the more experienced figures within the setup will be key.

“We’re the youngest team at this level by quite a long way,” he explained. “Our average age is 22. The closest team’s average age is 26. That says a lot, that four to five years’ experience gap that we have.

“We have some very talented and fantastic youngsters that we’re working hard with, and I think it’s really clear to see that they are improving on a daily basis. A little bit of experience at certain point of games would help.

“But there’s no better way of getting experience than by playing in the moments and every game makes us more experienced and every game the girls are learning from.

“Those points will come when they come. While we are completely aware of the situation we are in at the minute, it’s also something to focus on. It’s important to note that we’re not going to put ourselves under any pressure.

“A season isn’t won in the first quarter, a season isn’t won in the first half, it’s a marathon not a sprint. We just know that our aim is to stay up and avoid relegation and we’ve just got to make sure that we get more points than that team that finishes bottom.”

One-time WSL champions and last season’s runners-up Manchester City have also had a tough start to the campaign, currently placed ninth in the table with just one win from their opening five games.

Like Leicester, injuries to key players have played a part and Morgan is confident that whatever team they are able to field on Sunday, it will be a strong line-up full of international quality.

But the Foxes will once again have a large crowd behind them, who can, he believes, roar the side on to produce a positive performance and result.

The manager added: “Gareth [Taylor] is a fantastic coach and he gets them playing some very, very good football, so we know it’s going to be a tough game, it’s going to be a very difficult. They are a team full of internationals and fantastic players.

“They are obviously going through a moment that they are not used to, based on their history and the amount of success that they’ve had. But at the same time, they are still going to be hard to play even when not at their full potential at this moment in time.

“It’s a false position in the table that they are in at this point. We‘ve just got to be positive in our performance and positive in our mindset to take the game to them as well and look to compete with them, not just out of possession, but in possession, to see if we can get something from this match.

“It’s fantastic that we’re playing them at our ground, at King Power Stadium, in front of our fans. They can give us that lift in a game where if we play to our potential, we can be competitive and we can possibly get something out of it.”

All times GMT.