Post-matchLFC Women 0-1 Leicester City: Matt Beard's reaction
Natasha Dowie and Missy Bo Kearns each hit the woodwork on a frustrating Sunday afternoon for the Reds, with Hannah Cain’s eighth-minute strike ultimately settling the Barclays Women’s Super League game at Prenton Park.
Post-match, Beard spoke to Liverpoolfc.com. Read the manager’s reaction below.
On whether it was one of those days when Liverpool were never going to be able to score…
I think so. We’re gutted because we’ve done so much to let alone get something out of the game, but to win it. But if you don’t take your chances... we’ve had three clear-cut chances today and we haven’t taken them. The set-plays that we’ve had, we work on that a lot and it’s frustrating that we’ve not got anything from it today.
On the frustration of Leicester scoring early from a well-worked corner…
We had exactly the same routine set up, Sheffield United did it against Wrexham in the FA Cup, so it’s frustrating. We did it yesterday and we blocked every one in training, but we’ve lost the game on a set-play today and we’ve only got ourselves to blame that we’ve got nothing out of the game. As I said, we’ve had three or four really good chances to win the game today and we’ve just not taken them.
On the improved second-half performance…
We were frustrated with our first-half display because we weren’t patient enough with the build. Everyone was coming central, we couldn’t play around. If you look at Leicester they concede a lot of goals from crosses and that’s why we went for wing-backs today, to push the wide centre-backs on and push the wing-backs high to try to get crosses into the box. But the formation change [in the second half] helped I thought. Mel [Lawley], I thought first half was out of the game, second half she was fantastic.
On the Reds still being well placed to avoid relegation from the WSL…
We wanted to go into an international break with a win and the way the game was panning out we would have taken a draw at the end, and I felt we would definitely have been worthy of that. But it’s part and parcel of the game, sometimes you have days where for whatever reason it just doesn’t go in and even Willie [Kirk, Leicester’s manager] said to me after the game: ‘You have no luck.’ But it’s one of those things, there are lots of positives we can take from the chances we created [and] some of the play, especially in the second half, but we’ve got to be more clinical and more ruthless in the final third.