That concludes our blogging for the day. Back tomorrow for Matchday Live, and a full run of fixtures.
The West Ham United manager Rehanne Skinner has said she thinks none of last Sunday’s WSL matches should have taken place, so soon after the death of the former Liverpool and West Ham manager Matt Beard last Saturday. Liverpool’s trip to Aston Villa was postponed but other WSL sides still took to the field around 15 hours after the news of Beard’s death, at the age of 47, was announced.
Skinner, whose side were one of those in action away at Brighton last time out, said on Friday: “I don’t know why any of the games were on at the weekend, because [of] the amount of people, players, coaching staff across the game that have obviously known Matt. I think the expectation on what people had to do at the weekend was not assessed properly at all.”
Beard led West Ham to their first cup final in 2019, and was in charge at Liverpool until February this year. Skinner, whose team will host the defending champions Chelsea - another of Beard’s former clubs - this Sunday, continued: “I think the contingency plans around these things need to be looked into in much more detail. When you see some of the players and some of the staff that have had to go through the weekend - we shouldn’t be putting people in that position. If we’re going to talk about the wellbeing of players and coaches you can’t pay lip service to it.”
