This morning, when news broke that Liverpool women were looking to bring in ex-Manchester City head coach Gareth Taylor as their next permanent manager, a phrase that came to mind was one step forward, two steps back.
Taylor spent five years at City and, for a time, had them competing with Chelsea and Arsenal at the top of the FA Women’s Super League. Targeting him, at least on the surface, looks like the move a club that wants to close the gap on the top teams might make.
It is, or at least plausibly could be, a step forward.
All it took was three hours to get the two steps back, as Liverpool have reportedly now accepted a world record £1M bid for superstar forward Olivia Smith. The 20-year-old is widely considered one of the best young players in the world, the sort of player a club that wants to close the gap on the top teams would build around.
A side serious about wining silverware, pushing into the top three and qualifying for the Champions League, and perhaps in a year or two fighting for the title would see Smith as foundational to those plans.
Put simply, she simply isn’t the sort of player a club in Liverpool’s position in the women’s game would normally have access to. But Liverpool managed to get her. And now they’re selling her to one of the league’s top clubs. Two steps back. So it goes.
Perhaps exceptional scouting and solid coaching can help to turn that money into a few solid players for the Reds, but it’s hard not to see news like this and not draw the simple conclusion that Liverpool really, really don’t care about their women’s team.
And if the club don’t care, why should anyone else?