NewsGareth Taylor column: Lessons to learn, facing Aston Villa and Anna Josendal update

It was a bit of a frustrating day for us against Manchester United because we weren't at our best.

I thought the first half was pretty even and we probably had as many final-third actions as they did. But we didn't start the second half well and I was disappointed with that.

We started playing longer balls up the top to Martha [Thomas] and when you are doing that it's always going to be a case of 50-50.

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In general, I felt both teams when they gave away possession, United just did that little more with theirs than what we did.

We got ourselves back in the game and our response was good when we scored from a set-play, and I thought our set-plays were good. But then we conceded straight away, which was a sucker-punch.

There are definitely things for us to improve on, for sure, and lessons to be learned.

On the injury front, I'm hoping our recent signing Anna Josendal is getting closer to a return to action.

Sunday's game is potentially a little bit too soon for her. But it was good for us to get Beata [Olsson] back at the weekend, and it gives us good options now in the forward line.

We host Aston Villa in the WSL at St Helens Stadium and we want to carry on winning at our home ground after that win over Tottenham Hotspur.

Aston Villa are a tough proposition but we are back at St Helens with our supporters behind us again.

We were really well supported, as always, against United and I know you can make the difference again on Sunday.

This is a good opportunity for us and we certainly owe them one after what happened at Villa Park.

They caught us in a poor moment for us with the tight schedule of games we had that particular week and we were a little bit depleted with the squad.

We are looking forward to it, we will get the players' focus back and go again on Sunday and get them ready to fight hard for the team.

Thank you for your continued support.

YNWA,

Gareth

Gareth Taylor was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com's Steve Hunter