Liverpool want to prove that defense is the best form of attack this season. Opening the new WSL campaign with back-to-back wins is as good as it has been since the 2017 Spring Series under Scott Rogers, where the Reds repeated the same feat and finished in the top four.
This time around, it’s Matt Beard at the helm, and his emphasis on defensive stability demonstrates Liverpool’s evolution this season.
Last year the Reds finished the campaign with a goal difference of minus 15 – that says as much about their lack of firepower as their defensive shortcomings, but the 39 they conceded averaged more 1.6 goals per match.
“We have the ambition to be in the top five,” Beard said after a 2-0 triumph over Aston Villa on Sunday to follow up Arsenal’s 1-0 success last week. 180 minutes of football – which actually equates to 200 if you include long stoppage periods and two clean sheets.
Clearly, tidying up a gaping backline was at the top of Beard’s grand plan as he attempts to transform Liverpool from a middling team into one that keeps pace at the top.
Beard’s expectations eased in the ensuing sentence at Prenton Park. “We have to keep our feet on the ground,” he added, after describing his team’s departure as “fantastic”. In fairness, it couldn’t have gone much better for Liverpool, who blunted two of the division’s most devastating attacking units to successive shutouts.
The difference is largely in the personnel. Beard stuck with the same formation deployed for most of last season, a three-man defense with marauding full-backs, but the summer signings of Grace Fisk from West Ham and Jenna Clark from Glasgow City changed the colored by their resistance.
Gemma Bonner is the only center back to retain her place, and she has been equally impressive, but the jewels in Beard’s defensive crown have been Fisk and particularly Clark.
The last meeting between Liverpool and Villa at the end of May ended with a score of 3-3. This most recent contest, however, was far less frenetic, controlled by the stability of Liverpool’s rearguard and Clark’s ability to supervise and chaperone Rachel Daly.
Only once, in the 16th minute of the match, did Villa striker Daly step between Bonner and Clark to head a header at goal, but even then both men did enough to unsettle the England international, who rarely misses the frame from such an accommodating distance. .
Beyond the strong, solid goal protection of Rachael Laws, Clark and Fisk jointly had the confidence to break out of defence, using winger duo Taylor Hinds and Emma Koivisto to launch sustained waves of attack.
Both goals were scored by lightning-fast counterattacks, where the ball was swept back and forth with pace and efficiency, before being dispatched by summer signings Marie Hobinger and latterly Natasha Flint.
The work was tireless and diligent, allowing Hinds and Koivisto to move on the field and off, knowing that things were taken care of behind them.
“What we wanted to do with recruiting was create competition for spots,” Beard also commented on Sunday. “We wanted depth in the team. You have to earn the right to play.”
And it is this competitive appetite that is behind the initial momentum of this Liverpool team.
Clark described her new home on Merseyside as a “family unit” at weekends, which is the usual rhetoric from players, but she also spoke of the “special bonds” this tight-knit group have off the field.
Culture is the key to success in the WSL, as mistakes are very costly in a 22-game season – the duration is short and unforgiving.
There is of course a contingent of campaigners, including Emma Hayes, the Chelsea manager, who are beginning to argue for an expansion of the league to include more teams, but this favors the more established clubs and, although the WSL works in their current form, Liverpool have a real chance of disrupting the hierarchy.
This is a team of more limited means and experience, but who, in their second season back in WSL football, are actually becoming more elusive, not less.
Perhaps in hindsight the results against Arsenal and Villa won’t be seen as upsets at all.
It took a few years for the Liverpool institution to recognize the merit and value of Beard’s team, but with the women’s team now training at the elite facilities at Melwood Training Center – giving them a solid foundation – a clear unit and a manager who binds Overall, the Reds could see themselves as more than this season’s surprise package.
Watch Liverpool take on Everton in the Merseyside derby at Anfield, live Sky Sports Football, Sunday from 4 p.m.; kick-off at 4:30 p.m.