Gareth Taylor was left shaking his head after feeling like his squad outplayed their opponents in Manchester City’s 1-0 loss away at Chelsea.
Guro Reiten’s header on 14 minutes proved the game-winner in front of a sold-out crowd of 3,321 in blustery conditions at Kingsmeadow.
The windy loss blew City even further adrift of Barclays FA WSL leaders Arsenal, who now have a ten-point advantage over Taylor’s side.
“It’s a frustrating goal to give away,” admitted Taylor.
“We completely dominated the second half. We took about 20 minutes to get going and then we started to find our rhythm, find our game.
“In the second half, they were hanging on, and Chelsea did what they do well, which is protect the goal more often than not. Bit disappointed, especially with the dominance we had in the second half.
“It’s a gap, it’s a big gap, and we just need to keep chipping away at it. It starts next week. We’re unfortunate not to come away with at least a point here, I feel. We’ll attack next week’s game and start to claw back some of the ground that we’re off.”
Having taken the lead through Reiten on 14 minutes, Chelsea slowed the pace of the rest of the first half, but the visitors made good chances out of several Alex Greenwood free-kicks.
The first was punched to Ruby Mace, who skied her shot. The second found Jess Park, whose curling half-volley looked certain to go in at the far post before Ann-Katrin Berger’s miraculous fingertip intervention.
With 30 seconds to play, Caroline Weir could have snatched a point for City but chipped her shot just over from the edge of the box.
And though Taylor was ultimately disappointed with the result, he did find plenty of promise in 18-year-old Mace, who started at centre-half on Sunday and held her own against star Blues striker Sam Kerr.
He added: “These are big games. I thought we gave a good account of ourselves. The second half was a great performance. Plenty of positives to take for us.
“She [Ruby Mace] is a work in progress. She’s playing in a new position. We’ve got high hopes for her. The way she handled such a big game, at a young age. She made a few errors but she did some really good things as well, dealt with one-v-one defending really well. The future’s bright for a player like Ruby and she has loads more to come.”
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