Programme notesMatt Beard: We love playing at Prenton Park - it's good to be back

After two away games to begin the new calendar year, the Reds are back in Barclays Women's Super League action at home, with kick-off against the Gunners set for 4.30pm GMT.

Writing in his matchday programme notes, Beard says: "This is our first home game of 2024 and we are looking forward to it even though we know it will be another very tough game.

"We love playing at Prenton Park and we've got a good record here, but we'll need to make sure that we're on our 'A game' against an Arsenal side who have hit a bit of form and who have also strengthened their team in this window.

"We can definitely take confidence from the fact that we know we can beat Arsenal as we did on the opening day.

"Arsenal had a really disjointed pre-season with the summer tournaments that had been happening, but we still performed well that afternoon.

"We know that we can beat anyone on our day. I think we've proven that over the last two years when we've beaten Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Manchester United and there's not many teams from outside the top four who have done that.

"From my perspective, we need to make sure that we're consistent in our performance level and that's something that we've been speaking about as a group. To be honest, even the game at Bristol City in the FA Cup a fortnight ago was a disappointing team performance.

"So we need to nip that in the bud and really focus on working hard and making sure that we get back to what we know we can do.

"We will have Ceri Holland available again after her suspension last weekend. I said to the players after the game on Sunday that we gave people the benefit of the doubt after that Bristol City game with it being the first game in a month. In those circumstances, it's sometimes difficult to find a bit of a rhythm.

"However, there's no shirt that's safe for today's game and the players were going to have to earn the right to be selected during training."

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