ReactionMatt Beard buoyed by 'lots of positives' in Women's FA Cup win
Matt Beard was able to reflect on ‘lots of positives’ after Liverpool FC Women advanced in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup on Wednesday night.
In a rearranged tie against West Ham United in the fourth round, the Reds ran out 5-0 winners at Chigwell Construction Stadium.
An own goal was followed by a Leanne Kiernan strike during a first half that also saw the Hammers reduced to 10 players with a red card shown to Amber Tysiak.
After the break, Grace Fisk, Lucy Parry and Sam Kerr also chipped in with goals, enhancing confidence ahead of the sides meeting again in the Barclays Women’s Super League at St Helens Stadium on Sunday.
Read manager Beard’s post-match reaction with Liverpoolfc.com below…
On being really pleased with the performance on the night…
It’s a good win for us. The clean sheet is really, really important. If I look at a few things tonight: Kiernan getting on the scoresheet; Sam Kerr’s first goal for the club, same as Lucy Parry; lots of positives to take from tonight. The one thing I would say is we get in front and then I think we were a little bit lucky with their [disallowed] goal – I don’t think it was offside, if I’m honest. But we were due that little bit of luck with the decisions on that front.
But I was really pleased with the control of the game, and the really pleasing thing is to be able to give players more minutes, I was able to look after the players that have got one or two little knocks as well. And on top of that I thought Julia Bartel, when she came on, was fantastic.
On the boost of Sophie Roman Haug getting more minutes…
Yeah, definitely. If you look at not having her in the team, I think the most difficult thing for me is that, not that you can only play in one way, but when you’ve got someone that’s so good aerially and you can turn defence into attack when teams look to step on and press you, it just takes a lot of pressure off and gives us the ability to play in numerous ways.
I think the main thing for me tonight and I said this before the game, this is the only competition we can win. We still want to finish as high up the league table as we can and continue to progress there. Tonight, I think the great thing is, some of the performances from some of the individuals, especially the players that came off the bench as well, it gives me a headache, it gives me great options for team selection and should drive us and improve the standard on the pitch.
On meeting West Ham again on Sunday and it likely being quite a different game…
Of course it is. The FA Cup is a one-off game, we said that to the players at the hotel: ‘If you don’t win, that’s it, the competition is over.’ From that point of the view, the league game, it’s a game that’s important to us because I think if we get three points then I really think it gets us away from that bottom pack. Even though I think we’re comfortable and we’re doing well, it just gives us that opportunity to obviously look up rather than over our shoulder.
