Bristol City Women head coach Steve Kirby has declared his side will be “ready” for the visit of promotion rivals London City Lionesses on Sunday.

The Robins have already faced the Lionesses this season, falling to a 2-1 defeat at Hayes Lane in September, in what was head coach Kirby’s first fixture in charge of the club, but he believes that it will be a very different game this weekend.

“I feel great compared to that first time,” the City boss stated. “The team have obviously progressed really well. I'm really pleased with where they've got to and where I think they can continue to get to.

“Obviously that game I think I was in on the Thursday and we played on the Sunday. I think we had two or three days to prepare for it. We were playing a different way at that point in time and the lineups are going to be completely different, especially from our perspective.

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“We've improved, we've got better, and London City will have done as well, so I think there’s very little comparison.”

Just a single point separates the two teams going into Sunday’s game, with the Robins sitting in second place only on goal difference. The visitors are in third, and depending on results elsewhere, the winner could climb to the top of the Women’s Championship.

But despite the quality that the Lionesses have, including the likes of Sweden internationals Kosovare Asllani and Sofia Jakobsson and the league's top scorer Isobel Goodwin, the City head coach believes that his side should be well set up to get a good result.

“I think we match up great across the whole pitch and across all the teams if I'm honest,” he admitted. “I think one of our huge strengths is our individual capabilities, but those combine to make the collective effort, which is a huge part of why we're as good as we are.

“So, we will go into the game fancying that across the whole pitch in terms of those battles, those duels and we will be prepared to try and win them and come out on top, for sure.”

While Sunday’s game is set up to be another big challenge for City in their hunt for promotion, Kirby recognised that things will only get tougher as the business end of the season approaches, especially with the upcoming fixture list.

“Something that we've talked about internally is that it doesn't get any easier,” he acknowledged. “This game will be harder than the last one, and then Birmingham will be harder than this one for different reasons, and then the next one will be harder still because as the season goes on and what you're going for comes a little bit closer, it actually gets a bit harder.

"It never gets any easier, but we know that and we're prepared for that, and we're ready for it.”

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