Manchester City suffered their first loss to United at Leigh Sports Village on Sunday.
Filippa Angeldahl thought she had rescued a point for the visitors after United’s Hayley Ladd gave the home side the lead within two minutes. However, Lucia Garcia nudged the ball beyond Khiara Keating in added time to give United the lead once again as City fought back with ten players.
Ellie Roebuck was sent off just before the break in a last-ditch effort to deny Nikita Parris a run on goal.
Gareth Taylor said: “We get the red card which as a coach you never want to see that in the game. But I'm sure the second half more people would say it was very exciting, but I’d say it was a bit harsh if I'm honest.
“When I first saw it, I thought well it wasn’t high, the way Nikita rolled, I'm not having a go at her, but she was caught on the foot and it felt really harsh. Yellow, orange card I thought.
“But we got the players in at half time, spoke about a few things before Filippa scored, I felt like we were the team that we’re going to score, we were the team on top towards the end of the game.
“There were two penalty shouts and the one on Bunny Shaw was a penalty, I don't understand how between the officials they can't call that one, you don’t even need VAR. It's just so clear that she's got to the ball first and been taken out.”
The loss sees City remain in fourth in the Women’s Super League standings on 44 points, three points behind Arsenal with just one game to play, which means Taylor's side won't be playing in the Champions League next season.
Taylor added: “[We're] frustrated. We knew we had an opportunity to win the game tonight. But it’s life, we move on. We get a setback in the first half and we deal with that by coming out and being really positive in our play.”
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