Man City Manchester City

St Polten St Polten

When and where

We welcome St Polten to the Joie Stadium for a 20:00 (UK) kick-off on Thursday 12 December.

With four wins from four, we have already guaranteed safe passage to the quarter-finals. However, we’ll be looking to seal top spot in the group to ensure a seeding for the draw.

Get your ticket here

As always, there will be comprehensive coverage of the clash on the official Man City App and regular updates will be posted on X: @ManCityWomen.

Man City app coverage

The Official Man City App will be on hand to guide you through proceedings as we host the Austrian side.

Minute-by-minute text updates will begin in our Matchday Centre an hour and a half before kick-off and during the game you can also listen to live audio commentary while our text commentary continues.

Make sure to have push notifications turned on as well, so you can be alerted to key moments in the action, including goals, red cards and the team news.

Shortly after full-time, a detailed match report and reaction from Taylor and members of his squad will be published.

Highlights from the match will be available as well a full-match replay on CITY+ from 23:00.

Gareth Taylor preview

In his pre-match press conference, Taylor said: “[Last time against St Polten] I learned there are no easy games in the Champions League regardless of what you see on paper previously.

“An away fixture like that was an eye opener and lot of learnings for sure. If I’m honest I made maybe too many changes in that game and had to get some personnel on the pitch.

“Lauren [Hemp], Jill [Roord], Laia [Aleixandri] made a big difference, we are a young team but we had an exceptionally young team out that night. It’s a big ask for academy players to play. 

“I was really impressed by the way the game turned out. Mary scored there and scored on the weekend and is playing some really good football.”

KERSTIN CASPARIJ PREVIEW 

In her pre-match press conference, Casparij said: “It’s been good [playing in the Champions League].

“Starting off with Barcelona isn’t the easiest but we’ve managed different types of opponents as well with Hammarby, St Polten and Barcelona and different types of teams. 

“So far we’ve done really well to exploit how to get the wins.”

Last time out

We made it nine wins from nine in all competitions at the Joie Stadium this season with a 4-0 thrashing of Leicester City on Sunday.

Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw’s precise header inside two minutes ensured we made the perfect start to proceedings before the Jamaican powered home another ahead of the interval.

Second-half strikes from Jess Park and Mary Fowler then helped secure three points in Manchester.

It means we are yet to drop points or record anything other than a victory at home so far this term and keeps the pressure on first-place Chelsea.

Previous meeting

We made it two wins from two at the start of the group stage when we won 3-2 in Vienna in October.

Having beaten holders Barcelona 2-0 in our opening Group D assignment followed by a last-gasp 2-1 success at Liverpool three days before, confidence was high heading to Viola Park.

Alanna Kennedy opened the scoring with a thunderous strike from all of 25 yards which represented her first in Europe before the hosts equalised close to half-time through Melanie Brunnthaler.

St Polten then took the lead shortly after the break through Kamila Dubcova’s sublime strike, but Aoba Fujino equalised moments later with her first since signing this summer.

The match was finely poised heading into the closing stages before Mary Fowler popped up with brave header in the 80th minute to secure the success and a further three points in Europe.

By winning in Austria’s capital, we also extended our unbeaten start to the season to eight matches in all competitions.

TV coverage

The Champions League meeting between City and St Polten will be broadcast live in the United Kingdom on DAZNUK.