Key quotes from Marc Skinner in press conference before Man Utd Women v Lyon | December 2025

POTENTIAL TO GO TOP OF TABLE

“I mean, it’d be nice, right? It’d be nice. Look, if we can beat Lyon tomorrow, we give ourselves an opportunity to qualify automatically in terms of those top four, [going] to the quarter-final. However, we’ve still got two games in this [stage], with a game after this one coming tomorrow. You don’t romanticise about the outcome, you must find the grip. Like the reality is, if we don’t grind tomorrow and we don’t work and find every moment of everything, you don’t deserve to beat Lyon. Hopefully, through my words comes the respect we have for them, but also, when you play at Man United, we’re different to everybody else. We have this just inner ability to believe in each other and that can create miracles. So, for us tomorrow, I think if we can just do that, we’ll be proud of what we put out on the field and then who knows, maybe that [being top of the league table] can be the reality after the game.”

TERLAND WILL MISS THE MATCH

“Only Teri will be missing, [she] took a knock in the game [on Sunday], so Elisabeth Terland will be out for this one, but everybody else is fit and healthy and up for selection. Barring Millie [Turner], Millie’s close. Millie’s probably, potentially a couple of games away. [With Terland] it’s just a knock, upper body. She took a knock in the game, it should just be this game and then she’ll be ready for, hopefully, against Tottenham the weekend.”

TULLIS-JOYCE IS A STUDENT OF THE GAME

“I thought when we signed Phallon, I always saw the potential for her to be the world’s best. She has an athleticism that’s unrivalled really – there’s only a few in the world that have it. They have certain types, she has the complete package. What I’d say about her, the growth she’s made adapting to the English game and the student of the game that she is. Every time she walks into any meeting room, she’s got a book full of notes and she will ask anything, on set-pieces, the details. So, her brain is incredible. It absorbs so much information. And to sum it up, really, there’s one moment in the game against West Ham where a ball comes in from a free-kick and she clears the area and it’s a big booming ‘keeper’s’ [shout] and you could see the defence go [gestures calmness]. All of a sudden, it builds that confidence. You’d expect like Saf [Middleton-Patel] and Kayla [Rendell, United’s two other senior goalkeepers] to be learning from that. A different level of goalkeeper right now, but they’re young, they should be learning from that, and I think that moment sums her up because it was a moment where actually you can physically measure just the impact she has on the team.”