ReactionEverton 1-0 Liverpool: Matt Beard's verdict on WSL derby
Everton took the lead four minutes before half-time in Sunday’s Barclays Women’s Super League clash, with Katja Snoeijs converting a penalty.
The spot-kick was a contentious one, with the foul committed by Fuka Nagano on Honoka Hayashi occurring outside the area.
The Reds created a number of good chances before and after the goal that separated the sides but were denied several times by home goalkeeper Courtney Brosnan.
Read a summary of Beard’s post-match press conference below…
On the frustrations of the afternoon…
It’s frustrating. My players didn’t deserve to be on the losing end of that game today, 100 per cent. We need to do better when we’re getting these opportunities. Fuka should have scored, we’ve had other opportunities. Yes, you can credit Courtney Brosnan but everything was hit at her. I think we’ve had 17 shots today and got nothing from it. But at the same time, Everton have created nothing virtually all game and been gifted an opportunity to win the game.
When they go in front – and I said this to the players all week – they’re very, very difficult to break down, they don’t concede many goals. Take the Chelsea game out of the equation, 0-0 at the Emirates, 1-1 with [Crystal] Palace, 0-0 draws, 1-1 draws, they are a very, very difficult side to break down. I just feel we’ve been let down by the officials today; I feel we should have had two penalties, we’ve had a penalty given against us that wasn’t a penalty. Ultimately, those decisions have cost us either a point or potentially three points today.
On whether the season has been ‘disappointing’ so far…
Of course it has, it’s been a disappointing start. I’ve said time and time again, it has been a really disjointed whole pre-season, start of the season, even now losing Lawsy [Rachael Laws] this week, losing Jas Matthews. Sofie Lundgaard, Sophie Roman [Haug], Lucy Parry, it keeps happening. We can’t get any consistency with team selection. Last year we had such a good pre-season, everything went swimmingly, we had consistency with the team selection at the start, apart from maybe Sophie Roman with the nose injury.
But we have got to deal with that. We should have got something out of the game today. The referee, yes, has had a big impact in the game but we’ve had some really good chances to equalise today and we’ve not taken them, so that’s on us. We just need to get the League Cup game out the way next week, we need to use this international break to get everybody back fit and then obviously have a big push in December to try to get us in and around that top group again, and then obviously go from there.
On planning ahead in trying to win more points…
We just take it game by game. I lost Jas yesterday, I lost Rachael on Wednesday. Nearly lost Olivia Smith. So, we just take it game by game. We’ll focus on Newcastle to try to win that game and then we’ve got an international break and we want our players to come back hopefully fit and healthy from them.
On whether he takes heart from the way his team kept pushing for an equaliser…
I think we were super-aggressive today. I think our press was good, I felt we forced them into a lot of turnovers. When you’re chasing games, sometimes you make an erratic decision – that’s something we need to get better at. All the spaces were in the wide areas, we were always two-v-one in the wide areas and that’s when they become stretched. But there are positives we can take, for sure. I think if you look at the players’ performance and how hard they have worked today, they have left nothing on that pitch. So from that side, we can be proud of that.