ColumnMatt Beard on learning lessons from Man City loss and moving on to Arsenal

It was a bad day at the office for us last Sunday at Manchester City and we only had ourselves to blame because we were responsible for that.

We had a good game plan, we tweaked slightly how we would play and we worked on it throughout the whole week but we just didn’t implement it well enough.

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If I look at how we wanted to press, I thought we were caught between the two at times. It’s just little things that let us down on Sunday, like the detail on our passes and where we pass it to.

I don’t think we started the game well, even though Taylor Hinds scored a fantastic goal to put us in front and it was a goal that came from the spaces that we had identified before the game that we could exploit.

We were the architects of our own downfall, to be perfectly honest with you. If you look at Manchester City’s second goal and their fourth goal as an example, we didn’t need to put ourselves into that position first and foremost and you can’t gift a player like Khadija Shaw those opportunities.

You can’t do those things that we did against the likes of City, Chelsea and Arsenal because you will get punished. We know that.

But if I go back to the Chelsea game that we lost 5-1, as much as that result hurt us and we didn’t like it, we learned a lot from it and we used it as fuel to really kick on after that.

Like the Chelsea defeat, we will learn from this. The biggest thing for me is I’m not going to get carried away with what happened in the sense of doom and gloom, because Manchester City have made one change in two or three transfer windows, so that’s a well-oiled machine there that has been working to get to that level they are now.

From our perspective, we made a lot of changes in the summer and in the January before, so we understand we are going to have moments like that and there will still be a lack of understanding.

The key thing is, and I’ve said this to the players, we have worked so hard defensively this season but against City and Chelsea we’ve conceded 10 goals and that is super-frustrating.

Before Sunday, we had only conceded five goals from crosses – and crosses are the most-scored goals in the WSL. But we need to learn from it because we’ve got another tough fixture on Sunday against Arsenal (kick-off 4.30pm GMT).

We are looking forward to being at Prenton Park for the first time in 2024. We are really good on our home pitch and we want to bounce back in a positive way because we’ve had a frustrating start to January.

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As happy as we were to beat Bristol City in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup fourth round, we didn’t perform to the best of our ability there and that carried on against City. So we need to address that pretty quickly.

Of course the visit of Arsenal brings back some nice memories of a great day for us with the win on the opening day of the season at Emirates Stadium.

Everything that could go right for us that day did go right, and on another day Arsenal could have got a couple of goals themselves, to be fair. This is a completely different game and we are also playing against a completely different team now.

They have got players back from injury like Vivianne Miedema, they signed Emily Fox in the last window and have players they signed in the summer that have now got six months of experience playing in the WSL. It’s a completely different Arsenal team we will be playing.

We know this is going to be a tough game but we have proved over the course of the season that we can beat these teams as well. So we’ve got to be positive, be confident and take last weekend’s hurt and anguish into this game.

We will have Ceri Holland back from suspension and we missed her at City, especially her athleticism in breaking the lines and making the runs beyond the forwards.

Hopefully we will get Leanne Kiernan back in training but whether she will be available for selection on Sunday, I’m not too sure yet.

I have always said that we have competition for places here now and I told the players after the City game that nobody is guaranteed a shirt against Arsenal and they need to earn that right in training this week. So it will be interesting to see how the players react and respond this week.

But we are looking forward to it and we can’t wait to see you for the first time this year, and hopefully we can make it another day to remember against Arsenal.

We announced yesterday that Natasha Flint has rejoined Celtic Women until the end of this season.

Tash did really well up there with Celtic in the second half of last season and was really keen to be playing more regular football, so we wish her well on her return north.

Thank you for your continued support.

YNWA,

Matt

Matt Beard was speaking to Liverpoolfc.com's Steve Hunter