Shaun Goater urges caution as Aston Villa face out-of-sorts Manchester City

Aston Villa interim boss Shaun Goater insisted his side will approach Saturday’s Women’s Super League meeting against Manchester City “with caution”.

Back-to-back WSL losses leave City just outside of the top three but Goater, a popular former striker for City’s men’s team, warned of their ability to produce quality moments throughout a game.

“City have a very good team, they have confident players, they’ve probably not been at their best in the last game or two,” Goater said.

“But at the same time, they have the team and the quality to have moments in games where they can go right to the levels that they can reach.

“Whilst it can appear it could be a good time to play them, there are moments in the game they can just get to their levels so it’s one to approach with caution. It’s important to us to make sure we play well and limit City to not too many great actions within a game.”

Since taking over in mid-December, Goater has overseen three wins and a draw in all competitions and Villa are eighth in the WSL table.

Saturday’s match will be his last outing as interim manager after Villa appointed Natalia Arroyo as their new head coach earlier this week.

The interim boss confirmed that he has had “brief conversations” with the new Villa boss and will be returning to his role as an attacking coach.

His final game at the helm sees him come up against former City team-mate Gareth Taylor, who he also worked with as an assistant coach at the club, and Taylor is looking forward to meeting his old friend on Saturday.

He said: “Shaun’s a great guy, an old team-mate and probably taken a few things with him from us which is really good.

“You can see some similarities; they play with one deep mid(fielder) rather than two like us. It’ll be good to see him, we’re both really competitive, that’s not changed, and it’ll be the same again this weekend trying to win the game for our respective teams.”

City go into this weekend’s fixture still just two points behind second-placed Arsenal and Taylor is hoping his side may have some players back for the trip to Villa Park.

He said: “We had a small training group out on the pitch which involved Bunny Shaw, which is good, Viv (Miedema), Naomi Layzell, potentially looking like we could be a bit stronger certainly from the sidelines at the weekend.

“Even when missing some key players, it would be nice to get the likes of Bunny back potentially for some of the game.”