LFC WomenMatt Beard on Reading, Natasha Dowie return and Leanne Kiernan setback

It was frustrating to go out of the Vitality Women’s FA Cup at the weekend but we certainly felt we had the toughest draw playing away against Chelsea.

A few things didn’t go our way and we felt we should have had a penalty as well but we can’t change that now.

What we need to be better at is trusting ourselves in knowing we can play and we can cause teams problems, we can unsettle teams.

We said at half-time we needed to be braver with our shape and get higher up the pitch and just have a go. It’s a one-off game, there’s no pressure on anyone, so from our perspective I was really pleased with how we responded in the second half.

If I look at the chances Chelsea had in the second half, they all came from our turnovers and that’s frustrating, but they are a good side and I felt we gave a good account of ourselves and potentially we could have got something at the end out of it.

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It was great to see Gemma Bonner get a goal for us and she is really dangerous from set-pieces.

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind for Gemma coming back to the club and she is still finding her feet. We are conscious of the fact that she has sort of been thrown in at the deep end.

We took her out of the team at Chelsea with a view that she would come on. Hopefully now Gemma can settle in and just relax.

At the end of the day, there’s lots of positives we can take but the big thing now is we have got to make sure that we stay in this division. It’s as simple as that.

We’ve got two big games coming up at home in the Barclays Women's Super League, starting with Reading at Prenton Park on Sunday (kick-off 2pm GMT) when we want to try to take maximum points.

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It’s another tough game in the WSL. I watched Reading play recently against Manchester United and I was really impressed with them, with and without the ball, and they caused United a lot of problems.

We know their threat from crosses and set-plays, and we have really got to make sure that is a focus point this Sunday.

From my perspective, we just need to concentrate on ourselves and do what we know we can do well. If we can do that then I think we can definitely win this game.

We are in a similar position to Reading and Leicester, so we need to make sure that we do perform like we did against West Ham in the league game and be aggressive and be on the front foot.

It’s super frustrating that we will be without Shanice van de Sanden for up to two months after she picked up an injury to her knee in the warm-up against Chelsea the other week.

Shanice just hasn’t caught a break this year. She had the Achilles problem in pre-season and just as she was beginning to find her rhythm she felt her knee in the warm-up.

As a precaution, we sent her for a scan and it was the worst possible news we could get. It will be up to two months out of action.

The type of injury it is, it could take two months but we think she may be ahead of schedule. We’ll just have to see.

We also had some bad news with Leanne Kiernan, who has had a setback. We haven’t really had a break in that top end of the pitch, which has been super frustrating.

Look, it happens in football and you look at the men’s team and it’s similar with three players in their frontline out. But fingers crossed there will be no more.

Unfortunately with Leanne, her comeback will have to be put back a month now and while we were anticipating the end of February, beginning of March, we are now looking to the beginning of April when she will be able to return.

It was a flare-up in her heel, so they had to remove a bit of scar tissue, drain some fluid and then give her an injection to help that settle down, so she will be in a protective boot for a week.

Hopefully that means she will be back out on the training pitch by the end of next week and then back running the week after that.

With that in mind, I am absolutely delighted to welcome Natasha Dowie back to the club.

I think the biggest thing for us is that Tats is a goalscorer. If you look at her record, it’s consistently a goal every other game throughout her career.

When the opportunity arose to bring her in – the fact she’s a Liverpool fan as well – we felt it was a good move for us and a good move for her.

She can't play against Reading on Sunday because that is her parent club, but she will be available for the Leicester City game and I'm confident she will do a great job for us.

As always, thank you for your continued support.

YNWA,

Matt

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

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