ReactionMatt Beard: We have to make sure we learn from this game
Matt Beard detailed the lessons Liverpool FC Women must take from their 2-0 defeat by Manchester City in the Continental League Cup.
The Reds were undone by two second-half goals in Wednesday night’s tie at Prenton Park and now have to wait for other results to see if their tally of nine points in Group B is sufficient to qualify for the quarter-finals.
After an opening 45 minutes in which the home side had chances to break the deadlock, strikes from Filippa Angeldahl and Mary Fowler earned City the victory.
Post-match, LFC Women boss Beard spoke to Liverpoolfc.com – read his reaction below…
On his assessment of the match…
It was always going to be a tough game for us tonight. I felt we defended really well in the first half, I think they opened us up maybe once. The injuries, with obviously Charlotte [Wardlaw] having to go off and then Razza [Rhiannon Roberts] sort of hurt us a little bit. Then we had Carla [Humphrey] and Hannah [Silcock] cramp up for their second goal.
The frustrating thing was, the first one we had Razza off but we just need to clear our lines. The second goal, we’ve got Carla and Hannah down but we still could have defended it a little bit better. But there’s still positives we can take from tonight; from our perspective, we’ve got the minutes into the people that need minutes and the good thing is we keep everyone fresh for Sunday as well.
On Liverpool’s chances in the first half, with Missy Bo Kearns going closest…
I thought Missy Bo was excellent tonight, that was probably her best performance in a Liverpool shirt this season, for sure. As I said, they’re a tough team to play against and I felt we did OK in certain moments, especially pleased with the defensive shape in the first half. The thing we said at half-time was there were areas we felt we could hurt them, we just needed to be a little bit more positive when we broke their press. We kept going backwards when we could have gone forwards.
Sometimes when you play the top, top teams you’re a little bit hesitant about breaking forward just in case, but we need to create those spaces and trust that – like we did against West Ham at the weekend, once we broke it we were flooding forward. That’s another learning curve for us tonight and we’ve got to make sure we learn from that and we just keep moving forward.
On Sunday’s Barclays Women’s Super League clash with Leicester City…
It’s a big game, we know that. I’ve got every faith and confidence in the group, we have been playing well for the last three or four weeks and we’re getting that confidence back up at this level. We’re looking forward to the game and we’ll do as much as we can to win it, as we always do. We’re looking forward to it.