ColumnGareth Taylor: We are working hard on the areas we need to improve
In his latest column, Liverpool FC Women head coach Gareth Taylor reflects on the loss to Leicester City and previews Sunday’s Barclays Women’s Super League trip to Aston Villa.
It was a frustrating day for us at the King Power Stadium but I feel we didn’t deserve to lose.
The result was frustrating and I think we have been dealt two harsh results, certainly when you look at the context of the games. From the outside looking in, obviously those two results are disappointing, but I think anyone at both of those games will see we have been hard done by.
I felt that we probably controlled more of the Leicester game than we did the Everton game, so that was a positive in terms of sustaining attacks. But I just felt even though we built the play up really well, it was the final bit that let us down.
We had 77 final-third entries but just not enough box entries, so it kind of fizzled out. We had some small moments in the first half where we had opportunities to score but these are the things we really need to polish up on.
We are working hard on them in training and we are trying to give value for everything we do at the moment. But there will be some areas for sure we need to improve and that is in both boxes.
Sunday’s game was tough because if you play that game again 100 times over and play in the manner that we did, I didn’t feel we deserved to lose that game – but that’s what football can do to you sometimes.
Every goal you concede is a bad goal and you can dissect it. We needed to see the danger a little bit quicker.
I think Jenna Clark goes out to put pressure on the ball and we’ve just left a big gap between Gemma Bonner and Gemma Evans that needs to be narrowed off. Their player ran off the back of our midfielders and Faye Kirby had no chance with that header.
That was probably the only action on our goal they had in the whole game and we conceded a goal. So, it’s very frustrating, there are things to work on for sure and we’ve gone through it with the players this week on what needs to improve, what needs to get better but also looked at some of the things we did quite well.
It was good to have Emilia Szymczak on the bench for the first time, and she brings lots of enthusiasm and energy to the team.
She only trained with us for literally one-and-a-half training sessions before Sunday, so that was difficult. We have a number of options at right-side centre-back in particular but it’s good to have her in the ranks.
Emilia is a young player, she is starting her journey as a professional and this is a good environment for her to be in. But she has made a positive impression so far.
She can play in midfield but again there may be moments when we look to use that if we think it’s required. But looking at her profile, I think she does fit right-sided centre-half really well.
On Sunday we have another noon kick-off as we take on Aston Villa at Villa Park.
A good game in prospect, Villa have had two tough opening games against Brighton and Chelsea, taking one point.
They play really aggressively and I would probably say they are the most aggressive pressing team in the WSL currently, so that makes them really difficult to play against.
We need to try to maximise the space they will leave because when you press you always give up something and we need to try to highlight those and make sure that we maximise exploiting that as we can.
Thank you for your continued support.
YNWA,
Gareth
Gareth Taylor was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com's Steve Hunter