Reaction'Good learnings' - Matt Beard on LFC Women's latest pre-season step

A 90th-minute Lily Agg effort separated the teams at St. Andrew’s on Sunday afternoon as a Reds squad featuring several debutants and academy players continued building up to the 2023-24 campaign.

Post-match, Beard spoke to Liverpoolfc.com to reflect on the encounter and what his charges can take from it. Read the interview below…

On his assessment of the friendly with Birmingham…

I was really pleased with the fitness levels. And I thought the young academy girls that stepped up gave a good account of themselves for us today. Today was really about – we’ve got a lot of new faces – trying to build relationships, build pictures. We wanted to try to balance the team over the 90 minutes as best we can. I felt playing out we looked good, we could have maybe penetrated them a little bit quicker, but obviously we need to do a bit more work in the final third because I felt we have got into good positions and we have either not crossed it or not got in the box.

But, look, we are three weeks into pre-season so I think there’ll be some good learnings, especially for the new players. As I say, the most important thing is that we got the minutes in the tank now. We’ve got another week training now before we go to France. I guess the only disappointment was Zara [Shaw]’s injury; we’ve got a scan tomorrow so hopefully we can find out the extent of that, but it’s always a worry when someone goes down when there’s no-one near them. So, that would be the downside.

Obviously we’re disappointed to concede the goal in the way that we did with a straight ball, because I felt we defended really well for the most part. But, as I say, there’s loads of learnings we can take from that. Birmingham have got their season starting next week, I think this was their fifth [warm-up] game and I think you could see it was a little bit leggy at the back end [of the match]. But I think there’s lots of learnings we can take from today and lots of positives as well.

On the benefits of players gaining fitness and making debuts…

Yeah, definitely. As I said, we tried to balance the two teams out as best we can. We had five academy players play today and we had [two more] on the bench as well, so it speaks volumes for the academy and the work that is being done there. We have still got players to come back – we have got Teagan [Micah] to join the group, we have got Fuka [Nagano] to join the group at the back end of this week. So, overall, we are pleased with where we are fitness level-wise but we know we have got work to do obviously with understanding and building relationships. That’s going to take a little bit of time and that’s what pre-season is for.

On the experience for the U21s who got a chance at senior level, getting used to the step up…

Definitely, it’s maybe the speed of play and the decision-making. From that side, it will have been great learning for them and they’ll be able to take that back down to the academy group as well when they get back with them. They have come in this week, trained with us twice and I think they have given a good account of themselves today.