We welcome the Women’s Championship side to the Academy Stadium on Wednesday 26 October for our Group B curtain-raiser, with kick-off scheduled for 19:30 (UK).
City enter the competition as champions for a fourth time, having beaten Chelsea 3-1 in last season’s final at Kingsmeadow.
And while the boss pointed out that reaching the latter stages of the Conti Cup is only possible with a strong showing in the groups, he is hoping we can once again go the distance.
“When you win a competition, you want to retain it, that’s the sign of a really good team,” he explained.
“Our team will look quite different to last year, but it’s a good opportunity for us.
“The confidence of being successful in this competition over a number of years is nice to have, but we have to go out and earn it.
“We have to do the hard work in the group stages and then look for a nice bit of fortune and good play in the knockout stages.”
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Our clash with Blackburn comes just three days after a 3-0 Barclays Women’s Super League triumph away to Tottenham.
And with another league encounter at home to newly-promoted Liverpool coming up this weekend, the games are coming thick and fast for Gareth Taylor’s side.
However, the boss is relishing the busy fixture period, and sees it as an opportunity to rotate the squad and keep everyone at peak performance.
He said: “Yeah, it’s great [to start in the Conti Cup]. I think it’s nice for us to have a midweek game.
“It ups the amount of games, because we’ve been struggling to get rhythm, but a three-game week is great.
“We’ve got a decent squad with good availability and players fit which gives us an opportunity to potentially change things and give some much-needed minutes out to players.”
