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Women’s Super League 2024-25 Preview #8: Liverpool | Women’s Super League 2024-25 Preview

Photo of Vaseline VaselineSeptember 15, 2024
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Women’s Super League 2024-25 Preview #8: Liverpool | Women’s Super League 2024-25 Preview

The predicted position of the writers of The Guardian: 4th (NB: this is not necessarily Tom Garry’s prediction, but the average of our writers’ tips)

Position last season: 4th

The plan

It’s hard to overstate how impressive Liverpool’s fourth-place finish was last season. Not only did they break the stranglehold that the so-called “big four” had on the Women’s Super League by finishing above Manchester United, but they did so with a significantly inferior budget and a team that performed far more than the sum of their parts. Matt Beard’s side almost doubled their points tally from the previous campaign and came mathematically closer to winning the title than finishing in the bottom half. In short, they enjoyed the kind of season that every club outside the title race wished they could have had.

The big challenge now? To repeat, or even go one step further, and that won’t be easy, with all four teams having invested heavily in big names this summer and the standard of the competition rising across the league. But Liverpool have a relatively young squad and their plan is to keep building for the future. Perhaps a good run in a cup competition is the opportunity they should seize, because winning the title still feels a little unrealistic, despite last season’s heroics.

Beard tries to remain level-headed about their progress, saying: “From our perspective, now that we’re consolidated (in the league) and it’s our third year back in the top flight, it’s about not standing still or going backwards. We’ve definitely improved the squad. There’s not a lot of work that needs to be put into (the squad). We signed nine players the summer before (in 2023). It’s really about picking up where we left off, keeping our heads down and making sure we work hard.”