Matt Beard on international pride, Aston Villa clash and January ...

We have reviewed the first part of the season and we should be scoring a lot more goals than what we have done so far. We are third in the expected-goals list. But that’s obviously the hardest thing to do – score goals.

We’ve only lost one game in 10, so we are not a million miles away from that top three, but we just need a bit of a break on the injury front and that little bit of consistency. So as much as it has been frustrating, there are still positives that we can take.

We went behind against Crystal Palace and it wasn’t our best performance but we came back, we got into it and could have won it. But there are no easy games – every single club has invested in their playing staff, the coaching staff.

You’ve only got to look at Aston Villa with the players they have signed: of course Bo [Missy Bo Kearns]; the Brazilian, Gabi Nunes. They have spent a lot of money on some quality players.

I always say it’s not about the money, it’s the consistency. If I look at the systems I’ve played this season already – 3-4-3, 4-3-3 and 5-3-2 in six games.

The 5-3-2 served us really well last season from a defensive standpoint but we have given up more chances than what we did last year. Obviously that comes down to having to tweak the systems.

That’s what pre-season was like for us because we weren’t able to play what we wanted to do consistently due to the injuries we had.

There’s a few things that have had an impact on results. Paz [Lucy Parry] missed most of the pre-season, Hannah Silcock missed pre-season, Fisky [Grace Fisk] was injured, as were some of the international players. So, it was a little bit disjointed.

This has meant us having to play catch-up and I think the girls deserve credit because they adapted and still put performances in and created chances.