They may have just sealed the Premiership and completed an invincible season but Melbourne City defender Taylor Otto admits her side are up against it coming into the Ninja A-League Finals Series.
City sealed the Premier’s Plate in style on the final weekend of the regular season, thrashing Perth Glory 5-1 in Western Australia with Otto bagging two goals at the Sam Kerr Football Centre.
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As a result of their emphatic result, Michael Matricciani’s side sealed a second consecutive Premiership crown and with it the week off, however the American defender doesn’t think the latter part of the deal is necessarily beneficial to her side.
“I think it’s always hard to have a week off when everyone else is playing,” said Otto when speaking ahead of the Elimination Finals on Thursday afternoon.
“But we have a lot of confidence after that last game and training.
“We’re working on all the little things now and just trying to keep that confidence up and keep the energy up, which I think we’ll be able to do.”
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Otto and the rest of her City teammates will no doubt be watching on with a keen eye this weekend as they find out who their opponents will be in a two-legged semi-final clash.
Rewarded with a tie against the lowest-placed winner from this weekend’s Elimination Finals, Otto said City aren’t getting ahead of themselves despite their imperious campaign.
“I think there’s obviously a lot of hunger for for the Grand Final this year. That’s what we didn’t get last year, and that’s obviously our main goal coming in from last year,” she said.
“So it’s obviously great to win the league and be back in AFC (Women’s Champions League), but we celebrated that, and now that’s our main focus and I think we’re really, really excited for it.
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“To be honest, we haven’t spoken about last year’s Grand Final. I think as soon as it ended, we all just kind of decided that’s what we want next year, and it’s our goal, our main goal. And yeah, I think we’re excited that it’s finally back around.
“At the beginning of the year, we set our goals, and the treble was the main one, what an opportunity it is that we have the chance to do that, and I think we’re all really excited that we we did the first step to that, and now we’re just trying to go step by step.”
