Neil Redfearn and Casey Stoney will arrive at Prenton Park on Sunday ready to embark on individual, and ambitious, missions to redraw the landscape of women’s football in England.

As the new season begins with a round of Continental Tyres League Cup matches, the tie at Tranmere’s home involving Redfearn’s Liverpool and Stoney’s Manchester United is about much more than M62 bragging rights.

Redfearn arrived at Liverpool this summer trailing possibly the strongest CV of any coach employed in the domestic female game. The first former manager of a Football League club to work in the Women’s Super League, the 53-year-old impressed many during a stint in charge of a deeply troubled, highly politicised Leeds United side with which he arguably performed wonders in keeping them in the Championship in 2014-15.

Before securing the Leeds job, he combined running a well regarded Elland Road Academy with three separate spells as first-team caretaker, has also managed Rotherham United and, in 1997-98, was the top-scoring midfield star of the Barnsley team that played in the Premier League.

When Redfearn took charge of Doncaster Belles last season – and won the English women’s second-tier title – it represented an unprecedented move and Liverpool trust the experience gained during more than three decades spent playing, coaching and managing at high levels of the men’s professional game will help break Chelsea’s and Manchester City’s recent stranglehold on the WSL.

On paper Redfearn’s Liverpool – radically rebuilt this summer following the departures of 10 first-teamers – look significantly weaker than both Emma Hayes’s formidable Chelsea (double winners last season) and Nick Cushing’s high-spending City. Still, neither coach will remotely underestimate their battle hardened new rival.

If it will be intriguing to see how Redfearn’s experience translates in this new context, Stoney’s leap from life as a cornerstone of the England and – most recently – Liverpool defence to Manchester United’s dugout promises to prove equally fascinating.

Casey Stoney, the first manager of Manchester United Women, was a Liverpool player until earlier this year. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Handed a generous budget and the task of building a brand new, fully professional side capable of competing at the highest levels, Stoney is starting from scratch. This dictates that when the league season gets under way next month her team will begin in the second-tier Championship – and explains why they kick off as underdogs against top-flight Liverpool on Sunday.

Not that a home side also packed with players still getting to know each other can afford to relax against a United XI likely to be studded with Liverpool old girls, most notably the sometime England left-back Alex Greenwood and her international teammate, the goalkeeper Siobhan Chamberlain.

Greenwood and company will need to be mindful of the threat posed by Redfearn’s catalytic winger Jess Clarke during a pre-season in which Liverpool have improved fast with the band of new faces apparently erasing the memories of last season’s difficult campaign under the former manager, Scott Rogers.

Chris Kirkland, a former goalkeeper in the men’s side at Anfield and holder of a senior England cap, seems to be thriving in a new role as Redfearn’s goalkeeping coach. “I’m loving it,” says Kirkland. “It’s obviously different from the men’s game but the players have been fantastic. They want to learn and they listen to you.

“A lot of people have left and there’s a lot of new faces but it’s a fresh start and we’ve got a great team spirit. Neil’s been implementing the way he wants to play and the players are taking to it really well.”

Noted for promoting and supporting female backroom staff at Leeds, Redfearn, whose partner is the former leading women’s player-turned-commentator Lucy Ward, is nothing if not a feminist.

Nonetheless some in the women’s game fear that, should he and Kirkland succeed with Liverpool, a sport featuring a newly all-professional WSL top tier could be hijacked by coaches migrating from the men’s game, restricting opportunities for female managers.

That may be a debate for another day but Redfearn has already encouraged his club to embrace modernity by dropping “Ladies” from their name and rebranding themselves as Liverpool FC Women. “We’re entering a new era for women’s football,” he says. “The renaming fits perfectly with the move to a more modern and inclusive game.”

Of the 11 WSL top-flight teams only Everton and Yeovil retain the “Ladies” moniker but, perhaps more significantly, only four sides – Brighton, Bristol City, Chelsea and Reading – are managed by female coaches.

Two of them, Chelsea’s Hayes and Brighton’s Hope Powell, once in charge of England, meet in another intriguing Continental Tyres tie at Kingsmeadow where Hayes returns to the dugout three months after giving birth to a son, Harry. Hayes had been expecting twins but lost her other baby boy late in the pregnancy.

Like Brighton, a West Ham side now under the management of Matt Beard – formerly of the now defunct Boston Breakers in the US – are new entrants to England’s contentiously restructured top division this season and limber up with a trip to the holders, Arsenal.

Vivianne Miedema’s goal for Arsenal in the 1-0 final victory against Manchester City in March ensured the trophy went to Joe Montemurro’s side and now the Australian coach is eyeing further glittering prizes.

Liverpool accept the competition is likely to be intense. “The first few games are going to be so important,” says Kirkland. “We know we’ve got to start well.”