Manchester City Women manager Gareth Taylor insisted that there was 'really positive signs' despite his team falling to their second successive defeat at Chelsea on Sunday.
Emma Hayes' side took the lead three minutes before half time as Guro Reiten slid a cross over to Fran Kirby who had the simple task of tapping home. City tried to wrestle their way back into the match but their momentum was halted when Leila Ouahabi was adjudged to have handled the ball inside the area.
Maren Mjelde confidently stepped up to fire home the penalty and ensure the defending champions got off the mark for the season. For City though, they dropped to 10th having lost both of their opening two matches.
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Despite this, Taylor was pleased with aspects of his side's performance. "It's not great but it is what it is," he told the media post-match.
"We've had two away games, two tough away games. We've gone to Villa who are a new team and have done tremendously well on the day, and coming here was always going to be difficult.
"They don't really give much away, Chelsea - they lost last week, something was going to give today but I think the reaction and the levels that we showed today was really impressive and gives us something to build on." The result may have been much different for City had Laura Coombs not been superbly denied by Ann-Katrin Berger immediately following Kirby's opener.
Instead of focusing on missed chances, Taylor criticised the league structure which has only 22 matches and 12 teams competing in it. "That's the nature of the league," he added.
"I've always been negative about that. 22 games is nothing. It is what it is.
"Unless teams keep beating each other, you can probably get away with maybe four defeats in a season and still win the league. We can't do much about that; the rules are the rules, the teams are the teams.
"It wasn't hard last season when we won 13 on the bounce - it was actually a lot easier when we had all of our players fit. Our situation now is slightly different to what we had last season - it's not injuries, it's just a new team and new players to bed in.
"These will be really good players and this will be a really good team. Unfortunately at the moment we've had a couple of defeats which are tough to take but I think there were really positive signs there today."
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