Man City manager explains Keira Walsh's move to Barcelona

reportedly paid around £350,000 to Manchester City for

which makes her the world’s most expensive female footballer.

women's team manager Gareth Taylor claims Barcelona used aggressive transfer tactics to secure the signing of Walsh a day before the Women's Super League transfer deadline.

"I always believe that you want players who want to be here. Keira had given eight solid years of service and probably her last season developed into one of her best seasons for the club and on the international stage,"

Taylor said.

"When you have that and another project comes along, that was a real opportunity for her: a different league and a different country."

City manager says they wanted to keep the England star but she insisted to leave and faced them to negotiate with the Catalan club. The 25-year-old joined City in 2014 and had a year remaining on her contract.

"The last thing you want is a player who's going to stay because we made a decision to not take a world record fee and being really disgruntled; I don't think anyone really gains from that,"

Taylor said.

"We tried to support Keira the best we could while trying not to kill ourselves. Some of the earlier bids were of that mind where we weren't comfortable with that.

"But towards the end it was really aggressive bidding from them.”

Man City also lost four other England players this summer. Lucy Bronze joined Barcelona and Georgia Stanway moved to Bayern Munich. Ellen White and Jill Scott both decided to retire.

City women's team starts their season with the game against Aston Villa on Saturday.

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