Gareth Taylor column: Grace Fisk's England debut, Aston Villa trip and injury update
In his latest column, Liverpool FC Women head coach Gareth Taylor reflects on the start to the season and previews Sunday's trip to Aston Villa.
It's good to get the football back after the break. I have to say, it has been a really positive start from us to the new season.
If you take away the results away at Manchester City and Manchester United – those games were really tight and we could have got something out of both – we are making good progress.
I thought we should have beaten Tottenham at home. When you consider some of the players they have brought in, I think it's a good thing that we were disappointed not to take all three points.
Then we had the Merseyside derby win over Everton at Anfield. It is a fixture we previously weren't successful in at Anfield and that was a fantastic day for us to have with our supporters.
With the injuries that we have had with the likes of Ceri Holland, Vivien Endemann, Anna Josendal and now Aurélie Csillag being out, it makes our squad depth a bit thinner.
I felt it certainly affected us at Manchester United, where I just felt we didn't quite have enough to be able to win the game or even potentially to influence the game from the sidelines.
After an international break you just hope your players all come back unscathed, fit and healthy.
During this break we have seen it as a really good opportunity to get the players who didn't go away into a really good place for this part of the season.
We have been working hard on the training ground and we now hope to potentially get Lucy Parry, Mari Ward and Vivien back – plus Mao Itamura with improved fitness. That's a positive to get these players back in to try to help us.
We have lost some good options at the top of the pitch with Josendal, Aurélie and Sophie Roman Haug being out, as well as Ceri.
That would be difficult for any team, so we are having to be creative with players playing in slightly different positions.
We are looking forward to being back at it again after the international break. But the fixtures haven't necessarily been kind to us with league games at Aston Villa and then home to London City Lionesses, with the Subway Players Cup tie at home to Manchester United in the middle of them.
That is three games in seven days and that is going to be difficult to manage. I think in that game against United you will see a really youthful team from us because it's difficult after an international break for players to play three games in a week.
I am not saying they are not capable but we have to be careful with the players, as maybe in this moment in time that's something that they are not ready to do – playing three games in a week.
During the international break we had a couple of nice moments with Grace Fisk making her England debut and Natalia Ramos doing the same for Spain.
I was really pleased for Fisky and no-one deserves it more than her. She has had to be patient because she has made many squads – and rightly so because she is top, top class.
For me, Fisky is one of the top centre-halves in this league, so that is brilliant for her and it will give her a lot of confidence.
I'm delighted for Natalia as well and she deserves everything she gets because she works so hard. It was a big shift for her moving to Liverpool and she has brought brilliant energy into this team.
She is a good person, first and foremost – same as Fisky to work with – and for her to make the Spain squad was fantastic and it also shows a lot of trust from the coach.
We head to Aston Villa on Sunday and they have made a few changes – including the manager in Brian Sorensen, who has been in there for a while now.
Although he wasn't in charge of the team, he has been there a while behind the scenes so he would have seen a lot.
We are looking forward to getting the girls back and then having a good few days of training before we head to Villa.
YNWA,
Gareth
Gareth Taylor was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com's Steve Hunter
