Eidevall on preparations for Linkoping game

Our 2023/24 season is set to begin on Wednesday evening when we face Linkoping in a Champions League qualifier. 

It’s a crucial game as it will take us one step closer to the group stage of the competition, so with our full squad only reporting for pre-season training nine days ago, Jonas Eidevall has had to make some big decisions in the way that we’ve prepared and trained. 

“It's been such a quick turnaround with players returning from the World Cup, early last week,” said our head coach out in Linkoping. “We’ve basically only had a week now to practice together and there's so much things you want to cover in order to prepare everyone for what's coming, so I think it's been really hectic, but we’ve also had some really good days together. I can see glimpses of some really good things on the training pitches.”

With four new signings and limited time to work on tactical details after months away, our head coach has chosen to place an added focus elsewhere. 

“I mean, first and foremost, we need to start with who we are. And that's more not on a football level, that's more on a cultural level to see what does it mean to represent Arsenal? What are the behaviours? What are the actions that we want to define this group as? That's the first thing to try and instil that, but then of course, we need to implement our game model.

“We want to want to make our players really aligned on the pitch. And for them being predictable, what is their teammate going to do both on and off the ball? And that requires time and time we haven't had. So we have needed to have a lot of quality in the meetings and training to get be as effective and efficient as possible with the time that we have.”