ColumnMatt Beard on pre-season plans, young prospects and a tearful fond farewell to Missy Bo

It feels great to be back and of course this is our first full pre-season at the AXA Melwood Training Centre.

I hope all of our supporters have had a fantastic break with your family and friends and we look forward to seeing you all soon.

On a personal level, I managed to have a bit of a break this summer, which was good because last pre-season it was a very busy one with the training ground move, starting at the Academy temporarily and bringing in seven new faces, so it was a really hectic summer.

So far this summer we have brought Olivia Smith in and there are a couple more players we are looking at bringing in, so we are fully refreshed, fully recharged and looking forward to the new season.

The first couple of weeks of pre-season have gone well since we returned and we have just been revisiting the tactical side of our game, getting Olivia up to speed with us as well.

The players have all come back fit and well so I’m really excited to see the seven players that we brought in last year, all had a good last season on the pitch, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do this year.

We wanted to build a squad that we could grow and I think we did that. It will be interesting to see what we can take from last season into the new one.

This is our first pre-season starting at the AXA Melwood Training Centre. Last pre-season we were at the Academy and we were so grateful to Alex [Inglethorpe] and his team, who were fantastic for the way they supported us. I guess with the way we were situated around the men’s team and the U21s it brought us all closer together and that was the icing on the cake for us.

We always said what Melwood means to this team in a sense of our preparation and we feel very fortunate and very lucky to be here.

We have a good set of pre-season fixtures lined up which will test the players. With the Olympics being so late, it was difficult for us to try to get away somewhere this year and I just felt it would have been tough to go away with reduced numbers as there’s a lot of tournaments going on at the moment.

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We’ve got a good programme. We are playing against some tough WSL sides, which will be good learnings for us and put us in a good position. We want to win our pre-season games but for me it’s about making sure we get the tactical understanding right and things like that.

If I go back to when we went away to France last year and we played Atletico Madrid, PSG, it really gave us a good platform, one to show that we can play at that level and it also gave us different lessons because when you play against European sides it’s different mentalities and different styles, so it really gave us a good lesson.

We’ve got a tough pre-season, we are playing against some top sides and it will be good for us to take away positives, negatives and make sure it evolves us and gets us ready for Leicester City on day one.

On our incomings so far, I was delighted to get Olivia in because she is a very talented player and she is only young. What I love about her is her desire with and without the ball and technically she is very gifted, both feet, powerful.

She gave everything up to go to Portugal and further her career. She can also speak Spanish and Portuguese because of her mum and I think that shows a sign of maturity and [without that] you don’t achieve what she has achieved at such a young age already, obviously being Canada’s youngest player, the player of the tournament at the Gold Cup, so there’s lots of positives.

If I look at us last season then scoring goals was the toughest thing to do and obviously Olivia can score and also assist, so I just think she will be a thorn in a lot of defenders’ sides this season.

Another promising young player we have back is defender Hannah Silcock, who was on loan at Blackburn Rovers for experience last season.

I think Hannah could have got into our team towards the second half of last season. If people knew Hannah’s journey, I mean growing up she had a lot of injuries when she was younger because she grew so quick and it led to muscle injuries and things like that.

We also supported her through her A-levels. The education was a big piece for her and her family so we wanted to support her through that.

What we wanted to do when we sent Hannah to Blackburn on loan last season was to see her play every week, get 90 minutes, and she pretty much did that, so from that side it has built that robustness, it has built that in her to know she can do it.

Hannah is a very talented player. She had a bit of a niggle the back end of last season when she picked up a knee injury in her last game so she is a couple of weeks behind the others in pre-season, but she is a fantastic talent who has a great future ahead of her here that’s for sure.

We also have Lucy Parry and Zara Shaw who have also come through our youth system, which is great. For me, it’s vitally important that we have our home-grown players that come through the club and have supported the club.

One player who is back from injury is Sofie Lundgaard. She is fully fit now after her injury, she went away with the Denmark U23s, which we felt it was important for her to do as it gave her a couple of weeks’ extra training before coming back in with us for pre-season.

She has hit the ground running basically where she left off and we are really pleased. The thing with Sofie is she is settled now and I think when she first came in it was a real tough transition for her.

She is settled now, we are starting to see her personality, the funny side of her and things like that. We’ve got an exciting group.

Obviously, it goes without saying that it was sad to see Missy Bo Kearns depart because we didn’t want her to go and we didn’t want to lose her.

We had numerous conversations, especially in the second half of last season and before she went on international duty, and I never thought I would ever see that day when Missy Bo would go, but we have to respect how she feels and sometimes in life you have to put the person before the footballer.

In Bo’s case, all she knows is Liverpool and I think that is something that resonated with her and that she wanted to try maybe for her own personal development as a player and as a person to maybe try something different.

So, look, we respected that and we didn’t want her to go anywhere and I know one day she will come back to this football club and we wish her all the best.

We have got good competition in our midfield. We’ve got Zara Shaw back fully fit after her ACL. If I look at the balance of the squad we have five very good midfield players and we’ve also got Jas Matthews who can step into that role and she has done it numerous times for me before.

I’ve got to put the club and the team first when it comes down to the squad, so when we are looking at the squad depth, yes, it’s a blow to lose Bo because she is the Scouser in the team, but sometimes we have to respect the player’s wishes.

I had a really good close relationship with Bo. She has 100 per cent helped me and my family, she has helped my son and just listening to some of the players’ messages to her, like Leanne Kiernan, Sofie and Fuka Nagano, it just shows what a wonderful person she is.

It was emotional for me as well being honest as I felt as though I was losing my daughter. We had a moment downstairs when I got a bit teary because that’s the way I feel about her because we’ve been through so much together and she is only still a baby really.

Bo said she has already achieved her childhood dream, so I think this move will be great for her but 100 per cent we are going to miss her, the girls are going to miss her, but she has moved on, we have to move on and ultimately it happens in football.

Steven Gerrard left Liverpool eventually, as did Robbie Fowler and Jamie Carragher, at some point that does happen.

We wish her all the best but the conversations we had were emotional because we both wear our heart on our sleeve.

This week we announced contract extensions for Lucy Parry and Rachael Laws and I’m delighted.

I felt Paz progressed so well last season with the way that she performed in the Continental Cup and then had big impacts in games in the WSL when she came off the bench.

With the loan she had at Hibernian and the learnings from last season with us, I think she’s ready to have a starting berth. Obviously, she’s got to earn that right, but I’m really pleased with how she has progressed.

Lawsy was fantastic for us last season. She is important for the dressing room with her personality, her experience, and I felt last season was probably one of her best with us.

It was important we kept that consistency and Lawsy and Teagan Micah provide good competition for each other and they have got a good relationship, so it’s exciting to see how they will both perform this season.

Thank you for your continued support.

YNWA,

Matt

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Matt Beard was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com's Steve Hunter