LFC WomenGemma Bonner on pre-season return, Melwood excitement and new signings

Matt Beard’s squad were back being put through their paces on their first day of pre-season training on Monday.

Ahead of the eagerly anticipated move to new training facilities at the world-famous Melwood, the team are temporarily training at the Academy in Kirkby.

With the ongoing Women’s World Cup, the start of the new season has been delayed until October 1, with the Reds travelling to Emirates Stadium to face Arsenal on the opening day.

Read on as Bonner talks to Liverpoolfc.com about her excitement for pre-season, meeting new teammates, the upcoming move to Melwood and more...

On a return to pre-season training…

It’s exciting. I think it’s almost new beginnings for everyone with a lot of new players coming in, but everyone is excited and ready to go.

On starting pre-season temporarily at the Academy before the move to Melwood…

When I first came to the club first time around this is where we trained and it was where I had my signings photos, so it’s exciting to come back here. We are excited with the Melwood move in the works. It’s really exciting for us as a group and it is where we are striving to be.

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On a long pre-season schedule ahead with the new WSL season not starting until October…

Arsenal away at the Emirates, there’s no bigger way to start the season, but for us the way we finished last season we ended it on a huge positive in terms of performances. I think we are almost frustrated that the season ended when it did. I hope that we can build on that, we’ve got new players in who will really strengthen the squad. We’ve got a long pre-season but we are going away and have got some great friendlies lined up so it will hopefully prepare us well for the start of the new season.

On the fantastic team spirit within the group…

I think that is the strength of this group and how together we are, and I think that showed in patches in games last season. When you are away and training on your own you do miss that team element and being around essentially your friends every day. So, for us all to be back I think you can see everyone has got smiles on their faces and we are excited.

We know that we’ve got a lot of hard work to put in but I’m sure that this group will be ready. It’s an exciting group that we’ve got and a lot of exciting young players have come in and willing to learn and improve in the WSL. As a team we were happy with how we finished last season but we also know we want to do better this year.