BIRMINGHAM City Ladies boss David Parker admits his side ‘simply were not good enough’ after falling out of the Women’s FA Cup at the expense of Manchester City Ladies.
The Blues found themselves 1-0 down at the break after a first half goal from England striker Toni Duggan at the Manchester City Football Academy on Sunday.
Nikita Parris doubled the home side’s advantage before substitute Coral Jade-Haines sparked hopes of a fightback with seven minutes remaining.
But Jill Scott ensured it was Man City’s name in the hat for the semi-final score with a late goal to seal a 3-1 win for the home side.
“We deserved to go out of the FA Cup.” said Parker. “This wasn’t us playing the way we can. All the basics were not in place.
“Credit to Manchester City because they did better than us on the day and deserved to go through.
“Manchester City worked harder than us, they were technically better on the ball than us, they physically worked harder and outran us. Tactically they knew what we were doing.
“They’ve got a young keeper in goal, so you think ‘let’s test her a little bit more’ and she hasn’t really had much to save.
“We’re culprits of our own downfall and we’ve only got ourselves to blame. We weren’t good enough and it just shone throughout the whole team.
“I don’t think it was about giving Manchester City too much respect. They call us a ‘pub team’ and on the performance of Sunday we are.
“Yes we’ve got no money and we don’t have all these great players and great facilities but we can play.
“But on the performance on Sunday we were poor. We simply were not good enough.”
Blues were without the services of Karen Carney and Kirstly Linnett through injury, while striker Freda Ayisi remains banned for getting sent of in the league fixture between the two sides last month.
But Parker insists Sunday’s team were more than capable of coming away from Manchester with a win.
He added: “I have no issues with being without Karen (Carney), Freda (Ayisi), Kirstly (Linnett) and all the others that were out of the side.
“It’s not got anything to do with suspensions, injuries or anything else. Yes it would be great to have those players back in the squad but I was not worried.
“The team we put out were good enough to win that game of football. We have not turned up collectively, we’ve not performed how we can.
“We have got more than enough quality to come off the bench. We bring on a substitute who scores a goal which changed the game a little bit.
“That’s two games on the bounce now and it’s simply not good enough and we’re out of the FA Cup because we simply haven’t performed.”
Parker admitted watching the eventual final at Wembley will be hard for his side.
“It’s going to hurt now.” he added. “We’re going to watch a team go out and play at Wembley. We could have been at Wembley and that’s going to hurt the girls.”
