Gemma Donnelly heaped praise on her Rovers Ladies side as they stretched their unbeaten run to three games with a hard-fought point against Championship favourites Liverpool.

Alexandra Brooks made a string of important stops for Rovers who battled away courageously for their point at the Sir Tom Finney Stadium.

A third straight clean sheet made it seven points from the last nine available and Donnelly was delighted with what she saw. 

“I’m just super pleased with the girls’ performance, I thought they worked immensely hard,” she said.

“Everything that we did in the week played out in the game.

“The application from the girls was unbelievable. It wasn’t that we were sat behind the ball for large periods, I think we gave as good as we got.”

Brooks twice denied Rinsola Babajide when one-on-one, with two superb second half saves, as Rovers kept the visitors at bay.

“Alex has kept two clean sheets in the last two league games where we’ve gone on to take six points,” Donnelly added.

“Fran (Bentley) was back in contention this week and I spoke to her and said ‘if it was you and you’d kept two clean sheets and we’d picked up six points, would you be disappointed to be dropped?’.

“And she said ‘absolutely’. Alex is deserved of her place and I’m really glad that I kept her in there.”

The hosts’ best chance came in the first half, Elise Hughes teeing up Saffron Jordan who, after collecting the pass on the turn, saw her shot well saved.

There was a contentious moment in the second half when the referee failed to play advantage when Jordan was clean through, putting the ball into the net seconds after the referee had blown for a free kick on the edge of the box.

Donnelly said of the incident: “I think the referee has blown too early there and should have played advantage, we were clean through on goal and it was a fantastic finish.

“Saffron has finished the ball superbly well and It’s really disappointing that we’ve been penalised for something.

“And then they’ve gone down the other end, nearly scored and Alex has pulled off a worldie there, so I would have probably been saying a few more expletives had that happened.

“But I think it’s probably a fair result. For either side to have taken the three points would have been an injustice to the other team.”

Rovers: Brooks, Fletcher, McDonald, Richards, Johnson, Hodgson, Doyle, Hughes, Fenton, Edwards (Jukes, 81), Jordan

Subs: Newsham, Dean, Embley, Boydell, Stewart, Walters, Bentley