Liverpool Women’s season to date has been a disaster, and that’s putting it mildly. With half the games played in the Women’s Super League, the Reds sit last and are relegation favourites with a meagre three points to show for three draws and eight losses in 11 games played with just eight goals scored.
The lone bright spot had been a League Cup run that saw them qualify for the quarter finals thanks to a strong group stage—albeit a group stage that saw them mostly face off against lower league opposition.
In that quarter-final, their opponents were Chelsea. And Chelsea obliterated them to the tune of 9-1.
“We knew it would be a tough game,” manager Gareth Taylor said afterwards. “I think we gifted a lot of goals to them. When you put that into the mix and don’t perform to the required level—well, we were naive in some of our play and gifted them goals, and you can’t do that against a team like Chelsea.
Chelsea may be one of the Big Three in the WSL along with Arsenal and Manchester City, but the margin of the defeat on Sunday speaks to just how far this Liverpool side has fallen over the past 18 months, going from a fourth-place finish in 2023-24 to seventh last year to now looking likely for the drop.
After selling the club’s best player and one of the league’s top young talents in Olivia Smith to Arsenal last summer (for a record fee, which the club seemed bizarrely happy to trumpet at the time), there was always a sense going in that this season was about doing the bare minimum to survive.
It’s looking increasingly like that bare minimum isn’t going to be enough, and while Taylor can talk about naive players, from the outside it looks a team set up for failure. Two seasons ago, this seemed a side a step away from competing with the Chelseas of the women’s game. Now, they’re relegation fodder.
“The levels were just off,” Taylor added. “The levels were off anyway and then obviously when you don’t perform to an acceptable level of sprinting, competing, reacting you’re going to make it really difficult. We knew we were limited today, but the levels were off and you just can’t do that against Chelsea.
“We’re trying to get help. I think January is really important. We’re all really aware of what needs to improve. The thing they can impact is controlling what they can control. So they will have a few days off but they need to maintain fitness because we come straight back in to a busy programme in January.”
