Manchester City boss Gareth Taylor has encouraged his players to go about this weekend’s game against Tottenham in the “right manner” before the international break.
A 2-1 win over Barcelona in the second leg of their Women’s Champions League quarter-final tie was not enough to see City advance into the last four.
But they do still harbour ambitions of a second WSL title in their history and they go into the weekend’s games two points adrift of Chelsea.
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Taylor wants to keep on the coattails of the leaders by seeing off Tottenham before losing his players to their national teams.
“We are not looking too far ahead, we are just concentrating on this game at Tottenham and making sure we achieve our objective,” Taylor said.
“We have got ourselves into a fantastic position and have worked tremendously hard to get here and there is more work to be done, we know that.
“We fight and continue in the vain that we are, we need to approach this game in the right manner and we will do – hopefully we achieve the objective of going there, winning the game and then seeing in the international break before we restart again.”
Chelsea currently sit at the summit and go into their game at home to Birmingham buoyed by a marvellous Champions League quarter-final victory over Wolfsburg.
A 5-1 aggregate win shows how strong Emma Hayes’ Blues are and Birmingham boss Carla Ward knows her side face a tough test.
“Chelsea are one of the best teams in Europe,” she said.
“On Wednesday, that was probably one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from a women’s team. Emma Hayes has been brilliant to me this season as well.
“These are the games that you look forward to. Any player that wants to compete at the highest level should want to play these teams.
“Emma Hayes is probably the best female coach in the world so I’m excited to come up against her.”
Below the top two there is a scrap for the final Champions League place with both Manchester United and Arsenal in the running.
United currently sit third with a three-point advantage but have played a game more than Arsenal – who visit Bristol City while Casey Stoney’s side travel to Brighton.
At the other end of the table, both West Ham and Aston Villa will be looking for positive results as the bottom two face away trips of their own.
The Hammers are bottom of the WSL and head to Reading, while Villa face Everton.
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