MANCHESTER CITY'S Demi Stokes admitted her side’s FA WSL Continental Tyres Cup win at Sunderland on Saturday was the perfect homecoming, as both she and Steph Houghton starred in the 3-1 victory at their old club.

England and Man City skipper Houghton added to Nikita Parris’ close-range goal with a header of her own, as the Citizens raced into a two-goal lead inside 15 minutes.

The Black Cats bit back before half-time, Gemma Wilson heading home to reduce the deficit, but they could not find the all-important equaliser in the second half.

Toni Duggan then slammed in an injury-time penalty to maintain City’s 100 per cent start in the Continental Tyres Cup, and keep them top of Group Two.

And as a local girl herself, Stokes believes Houghton relishes any trip back to her old stomping ground.

“It's always good to come back to Sunderland,” said the 23-year-old, who has been capped by England 11 times.

“Obviously they've got a great crowd and it's always good to get our whole families to the game seen as there's quite a distance to Manchester.

“You can see how much it means to all the girls to be back here, and Steph will be feeling great; her whole family is here and so to score in front of them is nice.

“It's always great to win, and we're all feeling really positive about coming away from here with the points, but now we've got to go away and keep pushing forward.

“It's really important to keep the momentum going, but we've really just got to take things one game at a time.

“We don't want to get ahead of ourselves but of course we could go on to win this cup.

“We've shown that we're a good team and while no team will let us walk all over them, we're ready to fight for it.”

Meanwhile Sunderland’s Victoria Williams conceded a slow start was the undoing of her side as they failed to recover from the early blows of Parris and Houghton.

And the defender insists the Black Cats will go back to the drawing board to cut out conceding unnecessary set-piece goals.

She said: “I think what killed us is that we were slow to start. We only really got punished when it came to set-pieces which we are disappointed with, because we normally deal well with those.

“That's what let us down today, but we can't take away from what a quality side City are though.

“We know they like to play, and we were willing to let them play but without allowing them to break us down.

“We knew we couldn't just go around chasing the ball because they're not England internationals for nothing.

“We stuck to our gameplan, but by the second half it was too late. Again, we could've defended their set-pieces better. We're more disappointed with ourselves rather than feeling like we've been completely outplayed.”

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