Matt Beard On The Leicester Defeat, Julia Bartel's Debut, And How To Go Forward

Yesterday at 05:25 PM

The Liverpool Women's manager spoke following the match at the King Power Stadium.

The Women were back in action this week, hoping to harness the momentum following their win against Brighton last weekend. Unfortunately that wouldn't end up happening, as the Red Women were defeated by Leicester City at the King Power Stadium, after Olivia Smith's opening shot was canceled out by Janice Cayman and Missy Goodwin.

"It's a frustrating afternoon for numerous reasons but we were just not at it [in the] first half and then it's tough when you're playing teams, like Leicester, that are fighting for their lives," manager Matt Beard told the club website following the match.

"I said before the game to the players, they are fighting for everything, so we've got to make sure we outfight them and outwork them – and I don't think we did that in the first half. I thought we controlled the second half completely. We just needed a little bit more composure in certain moments at certain times today."

One of the few bright spots in the match, in addition to Olivia Smith's start and early goal, was the debut of midfielder Julia Bartel, coming on in the second half for Sam Kerr to hopefully find what would've been a second goal to bring the match all square again. The focus is finding minutes for the Spaniard, on loan from Chelsea, but her appearance on Sunday was a good start.

"Julia is a fantastic player, she's so comfortable on the ball [and] she's a little bit feisty as well, which we like. She would have come on last week but unfortunately Hannah Silcock hurt her knee," Beard explained.

"We've had to patiently build her up because she's not played many minutes for Chelsea – it's only really been [with] the Spanish youth national team. She's going to be a good addition for us."

While a defeat following last week's win is disappointing, there is still a lot of season left to play and time to turn things around. Liverpool currently sit in 7th place, with one win out of the last five, and Beard is confident they'll be able to break out of this unfortunate streak sooner rather than later.

"I said to the players after the game, we lost it in the first half and as much as it's been frustrating, we have to believe. Last year we had that belief. I know we've had the history that we've had injury-wise – we haven't got that now, so that's not even an excuse," Beard said.

"We just need to stay in control of games because technically we've got some very gifted players. I thought Marie Höbinger made such a difference when she came on in the second half. We've got players that can play and we need to make sure that we work harder when we don't have the ball.

"But I guess it would be Jürgen Klopp's comments when he first came in – '[doubter] to believer' – and I think for me that's probably where we are as a group. We had a good win last week, it's been a fantastic four weeks and then we've had a poor 40 minutes in the first half and when we're chasing games we just need to be a little bit more composed in certain situations.

"As I said, we'll be fine. There's been so many learning curves we can take from this season. We'll be fine but we just need to make sure that we get through to the next round of the FA Cup on Wednesday at West Ham."

Liverpool Women next travel to West Ham for the next round of the FA Cup on Wednesday, before hosting the Hammers in the league at St Helen's Stadium on Sunday February 2nd.