Baggaley wants City Women to make Stoke Gifford a fortress

Friday, August 24th 2018

Bristol City Women goalkeeper, Sophie Baggaley wants to make SGS College Stoke Gifford Stadium into a tough place to come for visiting teams this season.

City Women welcome Sheffield United Women on Sunday in the second round of the Continental Cup. The first round saw Oxtoby’s side pick up a point after a 2-2 draw in normal time with Leicester City, but it was Leicester who claimed an extra point after a 4-2 victory on penalties.

Baggaley believes Sunday gives City Women at the perfect opportunity to bounce back and claim a win: “Obviously we’re disappointed to not start the season off with three points, but it’s a chance on Sunday to right a few wrongs from last week and we’ve worked hard throughout the week to put that right.

“We know we need to be better in possession, so we’ve been working hard on that. We need to be more clinical and take our chances when we get them, if we do that on Sunday, hopefully we can come away with three points."

🎥 | "We really want to be hard to beat, especially at our home ground." @sophiebag96 looks ahead to #BCWFC's second round @ContiUK Cup clash with @sufc_women. ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/DpDPtjbCko
— Bristol City WFC (@bristolcitywfc) August 24, 2018

The visitors come to the SGS College Stoke Gifford Stadium sitting top of Group One North in the Continental Cup, having picked up a 2-1 victory over Aston Villa in the first round.

“Sheffield are a tough team, they will pose us some threats, but we know what we need to do in order to nullify those threats. They won at the weekend, so they’ll be on a high, but we’re confident we can come away with the three points.

“We really want to be hard to beat, especially at our home ground, we don’t want people to come here and think it’s going to be an easy game. We’re targeting to win as many games as possible here at home and make it difficult for teams to come here.", added Baggaley.

Baggaley is part of a City squad that boasts a host of young talent, she has recently been called up the England U23 squad for the Nordic Tournament in Strasbourg alongside midfielder, Carla Humphrey and she believes having a large group of young players will only benefit the club in the long-run.

“It’s a really ambitious group of players, it’s a young group but we’ll push each other to get better and that’ll only impact us positively as a team and benefit the club moving forward as we develop as a group.”