ReactionWhy Man City test was a useful exercise for Matt Beard and LFC Women

Marie Höbinger fired the Reds into a first-half lead but Gareth Taylor’s side, who were runners-up in the Barclays Women’s Super League last term, came back to win 2-1 after the half-time break.

The Reds host Leicester City at St Helens Stadium in their 2024-25 WSL opener on Sunday September 22 and Beard was pleased with a number of aspects of his side’s performance versus City.

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Read on as the boss reflects with Liverpoolfc.com on the 90 minutes and how the squad is shaping up ahead of the new campaign…

On his thoughts on the game…

There’s definitely plenty of learnings from today, which I think is vitally important. The first half I thought we were good, especially out of possession, but in possession we could have been a bit braver. But, if I look at the balance of the first half, we created two or three really good chances and then got our noses in front just before half-time to go 1-0 up, which I thought was deserved. Second half, when you make a lot of changes you become a bit disjointed. City’s first goal is probably my fault because we should have dealt with the long ball, and the second goal I thought it was a foul on Gemma [Evans], but I need to look back on that.

We then had a couple of good chances after that to maybe get back in the game. I thought there were some good individual performances [and it’s more] minutes in the tank. The learnings are important. There’s much we can take from our out-of-possession performance and we just need to tweak one or two things, but overall this has been a good exercise.

On the quality of Höbinger and her importance to the team…

What she gives us going forward, especially with her forward passing and the technique of her strike, is fantastic. She is an important player for us, she proved that last year.

On pre-season overall so far…

We know we are a good side. I think our pre-season has been a bit disjointed but we are pleased with where we are right now and we’ve got a big week next week when we play for the first time at our new home ground in St Helens. It’s a derby against Everton, albeit in a friendly, but we’ve got an important week to make sure we fine-tune some of the learnings from today. We’ve still got Olivia Smith, who is away with Canada, and Grace Fisk to come back, so there’s more players to come back into the side so we are building an exciting young team.

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