Fixtures
- Aston Villa Women Vs. Manchester City Women – Sat, May 18th 2024, 15:00
At A Glance
Aston Villa Women’s final game of the season sees Manchester City visit Villa Park on Saturday afternoon.
Although the home side have secured seventh place in the Barclays WSL with a game to spare, Villa could still play a pivotal role in the title race between Saturday’s visitors and Chelsea.
Carla Ward will also be saying farewell to the club after three seasons in charge, while our recent form against City is certainly a cause for optimism.
It’s set to be a cracker in B6.
This is the final hurdle for City as they chase a first title in eight years.
Chelsea’s victory over Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday evening means the two title-chasers are level on points heading into Saturday’s slate of fixtures.
That means goal difference could have a big say in where the trophy goes.
Standout Stats
Villa have won just one of their seven previous WSL meetings with Manchester City (D1 L5), a 4-3 victory on home soil in September 2022.
Manchester City have won two of their three away WSL games against Villa (L1), keeping a clean sheet in both victories. Each of those three matches has also seen them score 2+ goals.
Villa have won just one of their last 13 home WSL games (D4 L8) and remain winless across their last five matches on home soil (D3 L2).
Villa have a perfectly split record on the final day of the season across their three previous WSL seasons (W1 D1 L1), though their sole such victory did come last season with a 2-0 success against
Arsenal.
Villa have opened the scoring in each of their last three WSL home games, but failed to win any of them (D2 L1); in fact, the Villans have failed to win six of the seven home league games they’ve taken a
1-0 lead in this season (W1 D3 L3), the most any team has in a single Women’s Super League campaign.
Carla Ward will have been in the dugout for 75% of the Villans 88 total WSL games (66 – including this fixture); only Kelly Chambers (100% of Reading’s) and Emma Hayes (90% of
Chelsea’s) have taken charge of a larger proportion of a team’s total games in the competition.
The Last Meeting
Villa made a statement of intent when they last welcomed City to Villa Park in the WSL.
On what was the opening day of the 2022/23 campaign, Villa struck twice in 10 minutes through Alisha Lehmann and Rachel Daly to stun the visitors.
But City roared back through a Laura Coombs double and a Bunny Shaw strike.
But Kenza Dali restored parity just moments later before Daly tapped home a late winner to secure three points for Villa in truly memorable fashion.
Team News
Carla Ward confirmed during Thursday morning’s press conference that both Daphne van Domselaar and Lucy Staniforth will miss the final game of the season.
The pair have been out for an extended period with respective hip and ankle injuries and will unfortunately miss Saturday’s finale.
Everyone else is fit and available to feature at Villa Park.
The Boss
“My take is that [Manchester City] have to try and win by four goals. I’ve been asked if we’re going to park the bus and my response has been ‘Have we ever parked the bus?’ No, we haven’t. We’ve always played in a certain way against City and it’s been enjoyable. I want to go out on a high and I want to go out and attack the game. That’s what we’ll do.” – Carla Ward
