The Reds now lead the FA Women’s Championship after second-half goals by Leanne Kiernan and Taylor Hinds decided a hard-fought top-versus-second clash on Sunday afternoon.
Beard’s team are now 10 games unbeaten in all competitions and, post-match, Liverpoolfc.com spoke to the manager to get his thoughts on a significant victory at Maiden Castle.
Read on for a full transcript…
On the result…
It’s a great result for us, but I said before the game and I’ve said it over the course of the first half of the season that we just need to be in and around the top group come Christmas. We’ve put ourselves in front now but there’s still a long way to go, we’ve got to keep our feet on the floor. I was really pleased with the performance and I think we got our just rewards today.
On his team’s performance…
I think if you look at our first-half performance, that’s probably one of our best performances. I think we stopped them playing, we unsettled them, you could see them getting frustrated. They’re physical and we’ve put the players under a bit of stress this week because we knew we’d be kicked, we knew it would be a bit of a battle, first balls, second balls. We prepared for that this week and I felt we dealt with their physicality brilliantly. I didn’t realise how small this pitch was, length and width-wise, so you can see why they win a lot of games here because they are very direct. It’s about crosses, it’s about defending, about getting corners and winning set-plays. I felt we were fantastic on that, especially the corners coming in, because they’re a big side. I think they’ve scored 70 per cent of their goals this year from set-plays so I felt we dealt with them fantastically.
On Kiernan’s goalscoring instincts, which enabled her to bundle in the opener…
Yeah, we talk a lot about zones to attack, we talk a lot about getting in the positions and obviously the cross has caught the goalkeeper out. She’s going back into the goal and Lee’s got in there, she’s pushed it into her and we got the reward from it. But I felt the second goal was brilliant. We’d worked on that this week with regards to the wing-back getting a bit higher or the winger staying out, so it was pleasing that’s come off today for us. But everyone has contributed today, everyone has run their socks into the ground today and we’re really pleased with the three points.
On the support of the travelling Liverpool fans…
They were brilliant, they were brilliant. It looked like we had more [fans] then them at times. The fans have been brilliant and it’s exciting when we’re winning games. That’s 10 unbeaten now and five clean sheets on the spin so we’re not only working at the top end, we’re working at the bottom end just to make sure we’re consistent in our performance level. The important thing for me is that we’ve shown a different style of play today and a sense of maybe having to deal with being a bit more direct ourselves, first and second balls and showing the ugly side. I thought we did that brilliantly.