Beard highlights importance of away form ahead of Liverpool’s trip to West Ham United

Liverpool manager Matt Beard highlighted the importance of picking up points on the road ahead of his side’s first away game of the season at West Ham United.

The Reds travel to The Chigwell Construction Stadium to take on The Hammers this afternoon.

Liverpool opened the season with a somewhat frustrating 1-1 draw with Leicester City in St Helens last weekend. When speaking to the media ahead of this weekend’s fixture, Beard admitted that it was a case of two points dropped.

“We created numerous chances and I feel like we should have been out of sight in the first half but we weren’t,” Beard said. “Sometimes you’ve got to give the opposition credit; all of the time that they were allowed to stay in the game, it gives them that bit of belief. I still feel we should have won the game and it was two points dropped.

“We’ve had a tough pre-season with injuries, we are still playing catch up and I think we are pretty much there now.

“There are plenty of positives to take [from last weekend] but we need to learn from that goal because that can’t happen again. That was probably the most frustrating thing but these are learning curves.”

Liverpool finished in fourth position in the Barclays Women’s Super League table last season. The Reds ended the campaign with the third-best away record. Beard highlighted the importance of the continuation of that form on the road.

He said “We didn’t win away the season before, we got a couple of draws.

“This team has evolved so much since we’ve been back in the WSL. We didn’t need to make much change in the summer and we’re pleased with what we’ve got.

“If you’re going to do well, you need to pick points up away from home and we would love to get three points on Sunday. Our away form was good last year and hopefully, we can repeat that this year.”

Going on to discuss West Ham United, Beard acknowledged the fact that The Hammers are a team in transition whilst commenting that his side will be focusing on themselves.

He said “They had a tough start going to Old Trafford and we’ve looked at their pre-season games as well. They’ve had a lot of change this summer and it takes time. I know better than anyone because when I was at West Ham, we brought in a lot of players from overseas because they just didn’t have the budget to bring domestic players in. I don’t know whether history is repeating itself there.

“It’s tough because not only do you have to settle players into a new country, you have to settle them into a completely new style of football, so I don’t envy the job that Rehanne [Skinner] has got.

“We need to concentrate on ourselves. They’ve had a tough start at Old Trafford but we just need to make sure that we build on our performance from last week.”

Liverpool’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at West Ham United kicks-off at 3pm this afternoon.