Liverpool slammed over ‘lack of equality’
Shadow sports minister Alison McGovern has called out a “lack of equality” at Liverpool football club, after their women’s side were relegated from the Women’s Super League.
The Football Association decided final positions for the WSL based on points-per-game on Friday, 11 days after the league was formally terminated. Chelsea were crowned champions and Liverpool relegated to the Championship, with just one win from 14 games when the league was paused in March due to coronavirus.
Yesterday, Liverpool head coach Vicky Jepson echoed the club’s initial reaction to the FA’s decision, calling it “a difficult pill to swallow” as her side had eight league matches left. It is a steep fall for a club who have been in the WSL since its inception in 2011, winning back-to-back titles in 2013 and 2014, and marks the end of a season in which Liverpool’s treatment of their women’s set-up has come under fire.
The club had a record-breaking financial year in 2019, reporting a £42million pre-tax profit, but the same year Liverpool Women averaged just 10 full-time staff – with only five “players, managers and coaches” on contracts of more than 20 hours a week. All other players were classed as part-time. In the past two weeks four players left the club at the expiry of their contracts, with departing Scotland international Christie Murray saying she wanted to “be able to enjoy what I love again”.
McGovern, MP for Wirral South and a Liverpool supporter who has attended women’s team fixtures, said: “The contrast between the men’s Liverpool team and the women’s clearly could not be starker. Worse still, it is only a few years ago that Liverpool
Women won the title. I have to ask myself why women’s football – in general, but particularly in Liverpool’s case – is still given too little respect, too little investment and too little equality.”
Liverpool told The Sunday Telegraph they were “totally committed to the growth of the women’s game”, pointing to their foundation’s work getting more girls in the community involved in football as well as continued development with the women’s team.
The club said they were determined to return to the WSL “at the earliest opportunity” and added: “LFC Women have enjoyed many notable firsts including being the first women’s club to go into full-time training and this season enjoyed the first-ever WSL game at Anfield attracting more than 23,000 fans. The club’s investment into LFC Women has grown over a number of years and is now at an all-time high.”
The FA is aiming to begin the 2020-21 WSL season on Sept 5.