Keeping Everyone Fresh The Key, Says Bedford

- Everton are LCFC Women’s next Barclays Women’s Super League opponents
- The pair face off at Walton Hall Park on Thursday (6:30pm BST kick-off)
- Lydia Bedford gave an assessment of her squad’s fitness ahead of the game
- There are no fresh injury concerns to contend with, the manager revealed

With four days to prepare following the weekend’s visit of Aston Villa to King Power Stadium, Bedford revealed how the midweek encounter has altered how the team prepare in training at Belvoir Drive, ahead of travelling up to Merseyside for the 6:30pm kick-off at Walton Hall Park.

There’s another quick turnaround after facing the Toffees in the Barclays Women’s Super League, with Blackburn Rovers the Foxes’ next opponents this Sunday, as their Continental Tyres League Cup group stage commences. 

“I would say not a lot changes,” the 35-year-old commented in her pre-match press conference on Tuesday. “Obviously we’ve got less prep [time]. The positive is that we’d pretty much done all of our prep for Everton before the first game of the season.

“From a workload perspective, we had everything set for that game. Obviously, they’ve played two games since, so there’s a few changes, but nothing drastic to how we thought we’d set up.

“In terms of the players, the biggest priority is managing loading ahead of Thursday night. We want them to be as fresh as possible, but we’ve got little bits of information to drop in, so we’ve just had one session.

“We’ve managed loading pretty well during that session, we had lots of rotations and different players having time off and on, to keep them as fresh as possible.”

Although a few players went down with knocks last Sunday, there are no new injury concerns to contend with in the squad, with only the long-term absentees not set to travel. 

“Everyone has trained today," Bedford added. "We’ve got one player who had got a cold so they were off the pitch for that reason, but that’s just to protect them ahead of the game more than anything. Everyone is fully fit and ready to go.”