Women's Continental Cup: Man City reduced to ten as Man Utd win
Manchester Utd deservedly beat their cross town rivals CIty 2-0 after their below par opponents ended the game with ten players in this Group 2 North clash.
The Manchester clubs met on the opening day of the WSL season at the Etihad Stadium on 7 September which City won 1-0.
Read more on Tribal FootballManchester Utd deservedly beat their cross town rivals CIty 2-0 after their below par opponents ended the game with ten players in this Group 2 North clash.
The Manchester clubs met on the opening day of the WSL season at the Etihad Stadium on 7 September which City won 1-0.
Since then City, who are the Continental Cup holders, have won seven of their eight games in all competitions, the only blip coming in midweek with a draw in the Champions League against Atletico Madrid.
Initially Utd struggled in the debut WSL season but seemed to have found their feet with victories in their last two games.
In the Continental Cup the team winning in the 90 minutes claim the tree points. But if there scores are level after normal time it's straight into a penalty shoot-out with the victors taking two points and the losers one point.
And it was Utd who took advantage in the 7th minute . A free kick on the edge of the penalty area was curled delightfully beyond the diving Ellie Roebuck by skipperKatie Zelem.
This stunned City into action and for the remainder of the half they dominated with all of their pressure coming from out wide but the varying quality of crosses, particularly from Janine Beckie, enabled Utd to clear any danger.
Utd were content to defend and take their chances on the counterattack and just before the interval it almost paid off when Kirsty Hanson shot from distance and Roebuck had to palm over at full stretch.
City clearly hadn't learned their lesson from the first half and conceding again within 9 minutes of the restart.Hanson showed the value of a quality cross and Jess Sigsworth was in the right place to fire home.
The victor's task got harder on 65 minutes when they were reduced to ten men after Keira Walsh was shown a straight red for a late challenge on Hanson.
Utd then easily held out for their first points in their first game in this season's Continental Cup.
For City it was simply one of those days when they never really recovered from conceding early at the start of both halves and whilst they had plenty of possession, particularly in the first half, they lacked a cutting edge to get back into the game.
Utd showed them how to take their chances and once Walsh had been sent off the final result was never in doubt.
Full Time
Man Utd: 2 (Zelem 7, Sigsworth 54)
Man City: 0
Att: 4,042
Venue: Leigh Sports Village Stadium