Liverpool Women Aim for Early-Season Success After Spurs Draw

Liverpool Women entered the 2026-27 campaign with a simple, pragmatic calculation. Look at the opening three fixtures—newly promoted Charlton, mid-table Tottenham, and defending FAWSL champions Manchester City—and four points felt like a sensible early target. Ambitious enough. Realistic, too.

They are on course to hit it. It just doesn’t quite feel like enough.

A ruthless 4-0 dismantling of Charlton on opening day nudged expectations higher almost immediately, the kind of statement win that makes a team reassess its ceiling. Then came Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Spurs, a result that keeps Liverpool on track numerically but not emotionally.

Because they will walk away believing they left two points out on the pitch.

Manager Gareth Taylor certainly saw more than just a solid point. He saw a performance to build a season on.

"I'm really proud of the performance," he said afterwards. "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 decisive shot—kept letting Liverpool down. The structure was there, the pressure was constant, the intent was obvious. The cutting edge wasn’t.

The pattern of the game underlined Taylor’s frustration and pride in equal measure. Liverpool pushed Spurs deeper and deeper as the match wore on, pinning them back and forcing them to play almost exclusively in their own half.

"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 noted. "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 “could have” and “should have” will linger, especially with City looming next in a rare Friday night kickoff. Yet context matters. Even if Liverpool do finish this opening three-game stretch with the originally targeted four points, it will still represent a sizeable step forward from last season’s struggles.

And that’s before you factor in how sharp they have looked at times both in pre-season and across these first two league outings. The football is cleaner. The identity clearer. The confidence, you sense, is returning.

Taylor sees it in the details.

"There are a lot of elements of our game today that we're really satisfied with," he 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."

Spurs adjusted. Liverpool adapted. The home side still largely dictated where and how the game was played.

So the equation that seemed sensible before a ball was kicked—four points from three games—suddenly feels a little conservative. If this level of control and intensity carries into Friday against the champions, the question won’t be whether Liverpool can get back to mid-table.

It will be how much higher they dare to look.