Gareth Taylor reaction: 'We were us and we gave it everything'
Gareth Taylor took pride in Liverpool FC Women’s performance as they ‘gave everything’ in a 2-1 defeat by Arsenal.
An Alessio Russo brace earned the visitors the points in Sunday’s Barclays Women’s Super League game at Anfield.
Beata Olsson had equalised in between Russo’s goals and Jenna Clark also saw one disallowed for a debatable offside decision.
Read head coach Taylor’s verdict, speaking to Sky Sports post-match, below.
On his assessment of the match…
It was a game of quality at times. Probably two teams in the first half who are playing through the opponent too easily. We adjusted some things at half-time and spoke about being more aggressive. But in saying that, I liked a lot of the things we did with the ball in the first half.
In the second half, after an initial five minutes after half-time of Arsenal penning us in slightly, I thought we were exceptional. Albeit, not scoring the goals. Mao [Itamura] had a couple of opportunities, I remember Kappy [Cornelia Kapocs] getting in, Alice [Bergstrom] producing a couple of good moments for us in terms of balls into the box. And Arsenal had to defend for their lives – but they did that.
On another day, things look a little bit different for us. But we’re playing against a quality opponent. The thing I can be proud of and control… although there were a couple of incidents, with maybe our second goal, which I’m not too sure, is it offside? It looked like it to me. But we can control our levels of performance and the way we want to play, and I was really happy with that today.
On Clark’s disallowed goal..
I’ve briefly watched it back. I saw maybe it was either Beata or Viv [Endemann] stood in front of the ’keeper and gets a touch on it. I don’t know. The rules are quite baffling at the moment, because I think it was a deflected shot, hits an Arsenal player and then we take a touch. I don’t know.
But like I say, that’s out of our control. We had enough opportunities in the second half to get something. The performance is something to be proud of. I thought the supporters were great – they could see we were a team really trying to do something today.
On what pleased about him his side’s display…
Just the way we were us. I thought we took the ball well in midfield. Like I said, I thought both teams probably played through each other too easily in the first half. But they’re good players and they’re able to do that. And we have good players that are able to do that.
Fuka [Nagano] and Kirsty [Maclean] take the ball really well, Kappy causes problems, Alice comes onto the pitch and puts the ball into good areas. Mao has got that bit of craft that on another day I think potentially gets us a draw, if not wins the game with the amount of attempts we had in that final period.
The players gave everything. We know that we’re playing against a good opponent today and if we can produce those kinds of levels against the other teams then we have a chance. But I liked what we’ve done in all of the games, particularly against the better teams in the league – we’ve been us, we’ve shown what we can do and we’ve caused those teams problems.
