Match preview: Ladies eye semi-final spot
Liverpool Ladies eye a place in the Continental Cup semi-finals when they face a tricky quarter-final test away at Bristol Academy on Sunday afternoon.
Matt Beard's side have performed below expectations in the league, with a hat-trick of titles now an impossibility after success in 2013 and 2014.
Kick-off at the Stoke Gifford Stadium is at 2pm BST and the Ladies are determined to bounce back after successive defeats in the Women's Super League.
And according to goalkeeper Libby Stout, it means the club could not be more desperate to ensure their Continental Tyres Cup campaign ends with them lifting the trophy.
“It’s a great draw for us, it’s probably the best we could have hoped for. We would have liked to have been at home but we can’t complain,” said Stout.
“We’ve got to take each game as it comes, but it’s nice to make it out of the group stages and now be in the knockout stages.
“It’s exciting to be in a winner-takes-all game.
“A club of Liverpool’s size has to bring a trophy back each year, and this is a great opportunity to do that. Hopefully we can do it.
“Bristol have a lot of good players, so we have to be wary of them despite their position in the league at the moment.”
View from the opposition
Angharad James believes Bristol Academy can end their season with a flourish in the FA WSL Continental Tyres Cup after a difficult league season so far.
Other than a drastic change in fortunes, Bristol will finish their campaign at the bottom of FA WSL 1 following their 3-0 defeat to Birmingham last weekend.
It leaves them five points behind the Blues with two games to play but their season is far from over, as they’re just two games away from a final following their qualification from the Continental Tyres Cup group stage.
Bristol have been drawn at home against Liverpool in the quarter-finals and after a suffering a defeat at the Reds in the league last month, James is confident they can it get it right at Stoke Gifford Stadium.
“The Continental Tyres Cup was not as much of a focus as the league, but now we're going to turn to that and hopefully we can put in a performance and get the win on Sunday,” said the midfielder.
“We were quite disappointed with the performance against Liverpool earlier in the year.
“Following that we've done a lot of prep on how we can break them down and we're confident we can do what we failed to do last time and put things right.
“I don't think the performance against Birmingham was as bad as the result suggests, but it's not about the performance at this stage of the season, it's about the number of points you get and we have struggled with that this season.
“We're just looking forward to the game on Sunday now and putting things right in the cup.”
Last time out
The last time the two sides met was in the FA Women's Super League last month as a Natasha Dowie double sealed a 2-0 victory for the Reds.
A goal in each half from the Reds number nine, both assisted by Ashley Hodson, wrapped up an important three points for Matt Beard's side.