ColumnMatt Beard on win at Man Utd, 'gifted' Hinds and a special Christmas message

It was a fantastic way to end the year for us and for our supporters with the win over Manchester United, which I felt was well deserved.

It was important for us to win this game, especially after seeing Tottenham beat Arsenal the day before, which wasn’t fully expected, and maybe our result wasn’t expected by the outside eye either, but as I’ve said numerous times in this column: we know that we’ve got a talented team and a team that is together.

We wanted to force United into going long and didn’t want them to get into a rhythm because that’s when they become dangerous, because they have got very attacking front players.

I think we got the balance right off the positional play on the press because we showed the players a few clips at half-time and I thought we were excellent in that second half.

We defended fantastically and you only have to look at the bravery of Gemma Bonner which led to her head injury, and it reminded me of the opening-day win at Arsenal a bit in the way we put our bodies on the line.

It was a horrible clash of heads but if you look at the way she has defended for us all year, that is Gemma in a nutshell. If she doesn’t get her head on that, Rachel Williams does and it definitely goes in the back of the net.

We said in the huddle at training together on Saturday how big this game is and what it meant to our supporters, because we didn’t turn up there last season and we definitely didn’t want a repeat of that.

We know we have got performances like Sunday in our locker and the biggest thing for me now is getting that performance level on a consistent basis.

To be fair to the players, the international ones have played a lot of football this calendar year so sometimes we need to bear that in mind, but if I look back on the year the second half of last season we were excellent and we have had a good start to the season, the first part, this year.

I take pride in the big steps that we have made over the course of 2023.

It was a great week for us to reward out fans for their fantastic support with the Continental League Cup win over Everton and then Sunday’s win at Manchester United.

Sometimes in football you learn more from a draw or a defeat than you do with actually a win.

We’ve seen this time and time again over the last year-and-a-half back in the WSL when we have beaten Chelsea at home, beaten Arsenal away, beating Manchester City at home last season, so we know we can do it and we know we can compete.

That’s why I said at the start of this pre-season we wanted to test ourselves and play against these top teams in the build-up to the new season. We need to learn how to be better without the ball, we need to learn how to be better on the transitions and we need to learn if we are pressing how we can unsettle teams.

The Bristol City performance was frustrating but that’s another learning part for this team. We’ve got a young group this season with the players we brought in and we are always learning on the go.

I want to give a special mention to Sophie Roman Haug because she did a lot of work for the team against Manchester United. The flick-ons, holding the ball up, pressing, running the channels. The whole team were fantastic but Sophie did a lot of unselfish work.

Taylor Hinds scored our winner at United and I was delighted for her. She is not normally in that position when we have a corner but the changes we made in the team meant we put her in there.

She actually scored a similar goal against Blackburn in the cup and in training she scored one from almost the same area as she did on Sunday.

Taylor is a very talented player. In the Championship she stood out, for me. She can play more than just left-back and she can play anywhere really, because in training she is very consistent.

Stepping back into the WSL she had a bit of a tough time last year but she overcame that. It’s tough to perform week in, week out in this division at the top, top level. In Taylor’s position when you are up against some top-class wingers I think she has had a good year.

There is still plenty more to come from Taylor. From my perspective, it’s great to see how she dealt with the tough times last year. She has always come out of these tough times at the end of it, she is a gifted footballer.

Rachael Laws missed our game at United on Sunday and we will have to check on her. Lawsy has a bit of fluid on the back of her knee, she actually felt it when she stood up after taking a knock in the midweek cup win at Everton, and she is having a medical procedure on the knee so we will get it looked at just to make sure everything is fine.

We will now give the players nine days off and we are back in for training on January 1.

The last two years we have given the players two weeks off during Christmas but unfortunately what we found was it led to a lot of injuries in the second half of the season.

So, this time we are still getting a good break but it gives us the opportunity to get the players loaded accordingly leading into that first game of 2024, which is away to Bristol City in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup.

• Get your tickets for the next WSL game at Prenton Park when Liverpool host Arsenal on January 28

As this is my final column of 2023, I want to wish all of our supporters a very happy Christmas and hope you have a great time with your loved ones and friends.

As always, we are so grateful for your support. You follow us up and down the country in sometimes freezing conditions and sunshine. You are always supporting the team and I’m so glad we could wrong the right of last year against Manchester United.

Thank you for your continued support.

YNWA,

Matt

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