Liverpool head coach Gareth Taylor was trying to focus on the positives after his side were thumped 4-1 in their first Women’s Super League match of the season.
And to make it worse, it came at the hands of local rivals Everton, at Anfield.
The Reds went 1-0 ahead after 12 minutes courtesy of Cornelia Kapocs, but Brian Sorensen’s team bounced back before half-time with goals from Ornella Vignola and Katja Snoeijs.
And Vignola completed her hat-trick in the second half to give the Toffees their dream start to the campaign.
But Taylor – who was officially appointed as Liverpool’s head coach last month – will not dwell on the disappointment.
“You just continue to work hard and be really honest in your appraisals. Focus on the positives today, and there were a lot of positives, although it won’t feel that way for the players at this moment. I think it’s working hard. We knew that we weren’t going to be able to come in and affect things really, really quickly. I was actually probably more surprised in the first half at how well we did play.
“I probably didn’t expect us to play that well in the first half and control the game the way we did. We know this is not a short-term project. We don’t want to receive scorelines like that. But like I said before, sometimes in football you can have that type of situation happen, where the opposition has four attempts and they score four goals.”
Gareth Taylor: There are a lot of things to improve
Taylor added that the game ran away from his team, who had dominated the first half before the closing minutes.
“I think the control we had in the game was very good. Then it’s just the four minutes either side of half-time, you can see how quickly the game can get away from you. Disappointing, obviously, to concede the [first] goal when we were so dominant, but I felt that the players still then got a grip of the game.
“We could’ve been easily better than 1-0, even at 1-1 it could’ve probably been the scoreline that you’ve seen at the end quite easily. We hit the bar once, post twice, maybe Marie [Höbinger] has had a really good chance. [We had] lots of opportunities. There are a lot of things to improve, and we need to get better and we need to get fitter. The messaging to the players has been really positive. But we’ve got to really stick to what we do, and I think coming off it like we did either side of half-time has been our undoing.”
Liverpool’s next match is on Sunday, 14th September as they travel to the King Power Stadium to face Leicester City.
