The Blues suffered their first home defeat of 2018 on Sunday afternoon when Reading Women secured a 2-0 win at the Academy Stadium.
With the FA Women’s Super League, the FA Cup and now the quarter-finals of the Women’s Champions League, the squad haven’t been strangers to travelling over recent months.
The boss believes the busy schedule and tiredness of the players resulted in the loss to Reading.
“I thought you could tell from the start that it was going to be a grind because of all the travelling that we’ve had and amount of games we’ve played,” Cushing explained after the match. “I thought that in the end you saw one team which was fresh and one team which was tired.”
With younger players in the squad such as Ellie Roebuck and Georgia Stanway, Cushing explained that the travelling would take it’s toll.
“Stressing the younger players and exposing them to these types of situations will only benefit us in the long run,” the manager told ManCity.com. “But the other side of then playing so many games is that they’re young and don’t have the foundation to play all these minutes so they’re finding it difficult – but we will try and find a solution.
“The problem we’ve got is that a majority of our players go away on international duties now and will train with their countries so they don’t really have a break or a rest,” he added.
“The end of the season is going to be a grind for us and we are going to have to fight through it to see where we can get the players some rest.”
