ReactionMatt Beard on Everton 0-0 LFC Women and Jasmine Matthews' injury
'A missed opportunity' was Matt Beard's assessment of Liverpool FC Women's goalless draw away at Everton on Sunday afternoon.
The Reds were unable to find a breakthrough at Goodison Park in the Barclays Women's Super League encounter, though the point gained does move them up to fourth place in the standings.
Read on for the boss' post-match verdict…
On the result...
It didn't feel like a derby, to be honest with you. The pitch was heavy, the grass was long, so I think it slowed a lot of the play down for both teams. I felt we were comfortable [in the] first half. We need to be better in the final-third moments to convert the chances. Everton haven't won a game when they've gone behind, so we knew if we got the first goal we could maybe be comfortable.
I was really disappointed with the second half, I'm not going to lie. Too many turnovers, too many opportunities we were gifting them. In the end, it's important we saw it out. But we could have nicked it at the end with that opportunity with Ceri [Holland]. It's been a bit of a funny afternoon but it's another point on the board, it secures fourth in the short term for us. It would have been nice to have got the win but if you can't win it, you've got to make sure you walk away with something.
Obviously with Man United losing yesterday and us getting a point, it puts us [on] 29 now and them on 28. For us, it's another point on the board. I think it's a missed opportunity today, personally, especially with the injuries that they've got. But when we don't take the opportunities and you allow them to grow into the game, we were our own worst enemy today.
There's obviously been a lot said and written about this fixture. I think from our end, it's just about continuing doing what we're doing. We need to be more consistent. As I said before, if you can't win a game, we want to make sure that we get a point out of it. It would have been great to have won for our fans. We had a sold-out allocation today, which is fantastic, but obviously we couldn't cross the line.
On looking to finish in the top four...
Two years ago, we were in the Championship. Last year, we were in a relegation battle and then we ended up finishing the campaign comfortably. The league is our only focus because we're obviously out of the FA Cup. I think from my perspective, we just need to continue to pick points out. If you look at our run-in, we've got Manchester City next week, we've got Chelsea at home, Man United at home – big games for us still to look forward to. We just have to make sure we continue to progress and keep looking forward.
On Holland limping at the end of the game...
She got a dead leg last week and she just got a knock on that same area. Jas [Matthews] is the worry. It looks like she's torn her hamstring. She said it was worse than before. So if that's the case, that's going to be her season over.
On the improvement this season...
When we sat down in the summer and we looked at where we needed to improve, I think we've improved in all areas statistically. The key thing was to make sure that we started well. If you look at the first game of the season, it really gave us that platform to really kick off. We followed that up with a good win against Aston Villa. It's like anything in football, when you're winning games and things are going well, you've got that spring in your step.
The one thing I've been really, really pleased with this season is when we have had a negative result or a negative moment, how we've bounced back and responded. I think that's a sign of the group mentality in the sense of, 'Look, we've had a bad moment, we're not going to let it affect us and we re-focus and go again.' I think that's probably been the thing I've been most pleased with. Especially with the recruitment, we decided to go young, so we can grow this team. I think it's an exciting team, especially for the future.