The Barclay’s Women’s Super League returns from their international break this weekend, with Liverpool traveling south to Brisbane Road to face Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday. The long term injury updates are not new, with Marie Höbinger and Sophie Roman Haug suffering twin ACL injuries before the break, but there may be some better news from Gareth Taylor’s press conference on Friday. The manager did admit that they haven’t had a lot of time to see where the women are at physically, but was optimistic.
“We don’t get a lot of time, I think most coaches will tell you that, when you come back after the international break. You effectively have one or two days to prepare so it’s been a tight turnaround, but I think the girls have come back looking good today,” Taylor told the press.
“We’re still waiting on Leanne, she’s had an issue with her foot, bruising, and hopefully we can get her available tomorrow for training and then obviously travel with the squad because we’re a little bit light on numbers.
“Gemma Bonner will probably just come up a little bit short of the game and of course to go alongside the additional ones that you’re already aware of: Zara Shaw, Alejandra [Bernabe].
“Lucy Parry is getting a little bit closer and will possibly be back in training next week, which will help as well. So, outside of that, everyone from international duty has pretty much come back in good shape.”
Losing two such players like Roman Haug and Höbinger though will be a blow to the system that Taylor is trying to implement. Two attacking minded players losing their whole season is tough for for any team but especially for goal starved Liverpool who haven’t been able to win in the league yet. Taylor hinted at the possibility of doing business in January but that is still two months away.
“It does obviously limit us a little bit. Of course we can’t do anything until the transfer window opens again in January, but I think particularly the positions of those players – Sophie being a striker and Marie being an attacking midfielder – it’s not really an area of the pitch where we are stacked with players. So that’s really unfortunate,” the manager explained.
“The good news is we’ve got the plans together for them in terms of when the surgery will be, which is going to be soon, and hopefully get them on the road to recovery.
“But yeah, really tough – I think having that type of injury happen at any time of the season is not great, but where it sits, obviously it happened in back-to-back games, has been tough to take as well.”
Liverpool face Tottenham on Sunday at 12pm GMT/7am EST, and who knows, might even pull out a win.
