Symonds: City performance was one of our best

Main Club Sponsor

TICKETS

SHOP

But skipper knows there are areas where Albion still need to do better.

Neil Moxley

2025-09-15T06:00+01:00

Maisie Symonds was pleased with a lot of what Albion did against Manchester City. 📷 Kyle Hemsley.

Maisie Symonds swallowed the pain of defeat but declared Albion’s show at the Joie Stadium was ‘one of the best I remember in a Brighton shirt.’

The skipper put Friday's 2-1 defeat to Manchester City into perspective but warned that those levels have to be maintained if the club is to prosper in the Women’s Super League.

Fran Kirby opened the scoring, drilling a 14th-minute shot across England hopeful Khiara Keating. Rachel McLauchlan showed good awareness to find her colleague after Michelle Agyemang’s right-foot shot had been parried by Manchester City's keeper.

But the hosts rallied after the interval, scoring an equaliser through Bunny Shaw just before the hour. Yui Hasegawa finished off neat interplay on the edge of the area to secure the points 16 minutes from time.

However, Symonds saw plenty to be pleased about, saying: “I think it was a really strong performance - one of the best I remember being in a Brighton shirt. It’s frustrating because in the last half-hour, 20 minutes we dropped off.

“Overall, I think we’ve had two solid performances where we should have picked up more points than we have. It’s devastating, especially for the fans who travelled for hours to get there on Friday to support us.”

Rosa Kafaji came on to make her Albion debut in the second half. 📷 Kyle Hemsley.

Kirby’s withdrawal through injury at half-time slowed some of the momentum following a first-half display that could have ended with the visitors having more than the advantage of a single goal.

Symonds added: “It felt similar to the game against Aston Villa - if we had taken our chances, we could have been two or three-up at half-time and that would have helped us.

“But it didn’t quite fall for us and, when a team like City come at you, it’s difficult to keep every single chance away from your goal. They went for it and they had to because we were playing well. They’ve got top-class players and their goals were great.

“But I think this showed the level we can play. I believe that if we keep performing like this - if we take these standards and performance levels into the game against West Ham next Sunday and beyond - that eventually it will fall for us.

“We have to keep trying to improve every day. We’ve set ourselves a level and if we take those chances then we will find ourselves in a much better place.”