Leicester City manager Lydia Bedford says that she wants to witness good performances from her side in the early weeks of the new Barclays Women’s Super League season.
The Foxes have retained the core of the squad which avoided relegation to the Barclays Women’s Championship last season with manager Bedford working hard to develop and bring out the qualities of her team during a physical pre-season programme.
Leicester City lost all of their opening nine Barclays Women’s Super League matches last season as they initially struggled to transition into top flight football. This season’s schedule offers the East Midlands side the opportunity to get points on the board early on with one or two favourable fixtures.
When speaking to FAWSL Full-Time in a Leicester City media session, Bedford said that collecting early season points would be nice, however, she wants to first see her side show some real promise in their performances off the back of a successful pre-season.
“The points are a bonus but the performances will always be my biggest focus alongside that,” Bedford said. “If we get to the end of the month and we have performed really well in those three games and it’s marginal differences then I will be able to sleep reasonably easy at night.
“First and foremost, you have to set out to get that performance right and hopefully, the luck is with you on the day to go and pip it in that last moment.
“The first three games are a great opportunity but it won’t define our season. Either way, we have done a good job at seeing out the season before and if we don’t get points from the first three, we will be ready for the next games following that point. We have a target for points that we would like to have by Christmas and that’s what we are setting our sights on.”
Leicester City lost almost half of their league games in 2021/2022 by a two-goal margin or greater and Bedford went on to say that a lot of the focus in pre-season has been upon developing physical strength and competitiveness.
She said “The biggest thing for us was to be in a better place physically than we were last year. We did a lot of work in the second half of the season to be physically more competitive than we were when I walked through the door in December. A 10-week pre-season was for that purpose really and to be able to spend more time with them.
“When we reflected on last season, we felt that there were a number of games that we could’ve taken points from. One of our focuses has been remaining competitive in games for as long as possible and trying to turn games that we might have lost by fine margins into at least a point if not more. It has been really focused around how competitive we can be within that.
“Physical, tactical and then the main thing has been about togetherness because it doesn’t matter who you’ve got in the squad, if they play for themselves and not for each other, you’ve not got a chance of success. That’s what we have spent the majority of our time focusing on.”
Leicester City open the new season with a fixture at Everton on Sunday 11 September.
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