The Reds were defeated narrowly at Progress with Unity Stadium on Saturday afternoon, with Julia Zigiotti’s early goal ultimately proving enough for the hosts to claim all three points.
Taylor’s side therefore head into the October international break on seven points from five WSL outings this season.
In his post-match press conference, the head coach said: “I think it’s really hard to reflect with this soon without watching the game back, but my early feeling was we start by conceding an error which concedes a goal.
“I liked our reaction to that, I felt for the next 40 minutes we were good, made their goalkeeper make saves [and] controlled the game. I just felt the second half just became so stretched for both teams.
“[United were] a very direct team today. I don’t expect them to play into our hands by trying to play intricate football but it was very surprising how direct they were, when the goalkeeper is kicking a lot literally from her hands, not even putting it down.
“That’s probably playing to their strengths a little bit more than ours and I just didn’t like the second-half performance where we weren’t able to be ourselves and play more. We ended up matching them and trying to play the same game.”
Taylor continued: “I’ve been happy with a lot of the performances [so far this season]. Today, that second half, I just didn’t like it at all and I told the players that because we need to be braver.
“We need to play our way, play our game, and not try to match what United were doing.
“We were a little bit nervy still in the second half, whereas I felt like we got that out of ourselves in the first half and I said at half-time that we need to forget the scoreline: ‘We’ve been good for 40 minutes, we’ll win the game second half, we’ll draw the game in the second half.’
“So yeah, it’s a frustrating one.”
