Inside Liverpool Women’s season: ‘Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong’

Key Highlights

• A run of 282 days without a WSL win.“Fisky (captain Grace Fisk) said to me after the win how emotional it was,” Taylor, who joined in August, says two days later from his office at Melwood overlooking the training pitches.
• “The players on the pitch, the injured players in the stands, we’ve wanted a good moment, just something to cling onto.”Liverpool remain 12th out of 12, albeit now one point off West Ham United and Everton in 11th and 10th and two off Leicester City in ninth.
• Some results have been encouraging, such as the back-to-back league draws with Brighton & Hove Albion and Chelsea in November, the latter during which Liverpool limited the reigning champions to just one shot on target while registering a marginally higher expected goals (1.13 vs 1.11), suggesting the quality of their chances was similar. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOthers dispalys have felt more dispiriting.
• The 9-1 League Cup quarter-final drubbing against Chelsea is the obvious pick, but more agonising are the narrow defeats.
• Five of Liverpool’s eight league defeats this season have been by one goal, with the winner in three of those — Arsenal, Manchester City and London City Lionesses — arriving after 86 minutes. Taylor is not hiding from the dire form (this interview was set up weeks before Sunday’s win), nor the fact Liverpool are still entrenched in a relegation battle, having to reckon with the very real possibility of facing the third-best WSL2 side in a one-off play-off match for top-flight status next season. No one at Liverpool finds the situation acceptable or satisfactory.