Liverpool Women Show Improvement in Spurs Draw Ahead of City Test
Liverpool Women started the 2026-27 campaign with a simple, sensible target: survive a tricky opening trio of fixtures against newly promoted Charlton, mid-table Tottenham, and reigning champions Manchester City with four points in the bank. That would be progress. Respectable. A platform.
They might feel they should already be ahead of schedule.
A ruthless 4-0 dismantling of Charlton on opening day hinted that this Liverpool side carries more edge than last season’s strugglers. The draw with Spurs that followed on Sunday did not quite match the scoreline of week one, but it said something else just as loud: this is a team starting to control games again.
And they walked off the pitch convinced they had left something behind.
Gareth Taylor certainly saw it that way. The Liverpool manager cut a figure far more satisfied than frustrated, his post-match verdict underlining how far his side have come in a short space of time.
"I'm really proud of the performance," he said. "I felt we were the better team. We improved second half, but I still felt we were probably the team that were looking more likely in the first. I think where we've just come up short today is our final action."
That final action. The last pass, the clean strike, the decision in the box. Liverpool had the platform; they just didn’t always deliver the punch.
The pattern of the second half made that clear. Liverpool pushed higher, passed sharper, and squeezed Spurs into their own territory for long stretches. The visitors barely escaped.
"For the amount of play that we had, it felt in the second half that Tottenham really couldn't get out of their half but only for a couple of moments," Taylor said. "I'm really proud of the team and where we've taken it to now. I thought the goal was quality and I thought we could have had a penalty."
That sense of control would have been unthinkable during some of last season’s more anxious afternoons. Back then, Liverpool often chased games, clung on, or simply survived. Now, even when the result flatters the opposition, the performance carries authority.
Four points from three games, if that is where they land after facing City, would mark a “massive improvement” on those previous struggles. Taylor knows it. The players know it. The football is starting to show it.
And this is not just about numbers. Pre-season hinted at a group rediscovering its identity, moving the ball with more conviction, pressing with more belief. Those flashes have carried into the early weeks of the campaign, and Spurs felt the weight of that on Sunday.
"There are a lot of elements of our game today that we're really satisfied with," Taylor said. "Tottenham are a good team. They're not going to give up the spaces easily and they wanted to be aggressive and change their press in the first half to try to stop us gaining so much ball."
Tottenham tried to disrupt, to adjust, to choke off Liverpool’s rhythm. For long spells, it didn’t work. Liverpool kept finding routes through, kept pinning them back, kept asking questions.
The answers in the final third will have to come quickly now. Manchester City await in a rare Friday night kick-off, the kind of fixture that exposes any looseness and punishes any wastefulness. Liverpool go into it with belief, not bravado, and with a manager who sees more than just a respectable draw on the board.
If this is what Liverpool look like while still “coming up short” in the final action, what happens when that last touch starts to match the rest of their play?
