Every word from Jonas' pre-Manchester City presser

We face Manchester City in the fifth round of the FA Cup on Sunday, and ahead of the game at Meadow Park Jonas Eidevall held his pre-match press conference.

Here is everything he had to say to the journalists in attendance at the Sobha Realty Training Centre:

on Wednesday’s game being postponed:
Yes, it was frustrating, but I think if you take the Conti Cup as an example and the regulations around it and the format of it, I do think it’s a tournament that other countries look at and say that’s not how we should run a tournament. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement in ensuring a better competition and it’s probably something that needs looking at.

on London City Lionesses sacking their coach when our game was meant to be underway:
They probably would have had another timing on the press release otherwise it would have been very bizarre. I’ve never heard about a coach getting released from their duties during a game.

on his thoughts ahead of Sunday’s game:
It’s a big game against a very good Manchester City. We are really looking forward to it, these are the games that we look forward to playing the most, so it’s going to be an exciting challenge.

on whether Leah Williamson could start again:
She has reacted well and that means that she can play more minutes. Then who is going to start and who is not going to start, we have two more training sessions that will take the decision.

on how far away Leah is from playing a full 90-minute game:
She’s much closer now than she was last week.

on what’s been said since our defeat to West Ham:
We had learnings from that game in things that we can control better, especially in the way that we position when we have the ball. I think the response from the players has been very, very good and we’ve also practised well. I was really looking forward to seeing us play against London City Lionesses to see how we have progressed since the West Ham game, but now we have to do it against Manchester City instead.

on whether he expects a big reaction on Sunday:
I think we are a very focused team that really wants to compete.

on whether cup competitions are our best chance of silverware this season:
I don’t think like that. Every game needs maximum preparation, every game needs maximum focus and that’s the way we’re going about that.

on his memories of recent games against Manchester City at Meadow Park:
We have happy memories. I think we’ve won all of our games against Manchester City that I’ve taken part in at Meadow Park, but they’ve always been quite intense games, challenging games, apart from the one that we won 5-0. I think the games have been decided on small margins and you need to work very hard as a collective to get those, so we know and we understand that that’s going to be the case this Sunday as well.

on the importance of our home fans:
Our fans are extremely important to us, in both the way that they support us home and away. They’ve been incredible, especially this season, and if we can continue to get that support in these three games here then it’s going to be a massive factor for us in order to get good performances and good results.

on the importance of Leah Williamson’s leadership:
Very important.

on whether he prefers a break or another game straight after defeat:
I’m adaptable. If you have more time then you work with that and if you have less time then you work with that. It’s not really about what you prefer, it’s about how you adapt and make the best out of the situation.

on the importance of cup games to help incorporate squad players:
We built the squad for all our competitive games during the season, it's not only 22 league games. We hoped to be involved deep in four competitions but we went out early in Europe so that shaved off a couple of games for us, but we built a squad to be able to compete in all those four competitions. That means that the competition for places is tough but it also means that there is a clear reason why you are in this squad, and why we want you to be in this squad as well because you have a clear role and responsibility, and I think Stina has been doing that very well this season.

on how tight this game will be:
It's going to be a game decided by small margins. The thing in football is you never know what moment is going to provide a small margin and that's what makes it such an intriguing and fascinating game. If you knew which second to switch on then it would be easy, but there are hundreds of potential situations that can be game-deciding and you need to treat each one of them that way otherwise you're not doing the utmost of the things you can control in order to get the result. That's the challenge and the team that's going to do that best I think is going to win.

on how we changed our plans following the postponement:
We switched our mindset very quickly - there’s no point in dwelling on the past so we changed the whole operation in 10 minutes to make sure that we changed the nutrition time for the players. We were able to go out and have a good training session here; we obviously had to respect the natural light because we don't have any floodlights to train under and make sure the players got nutrition after. I think given the circumstances the players and staff did a splendid job making sure that we turned it around and it really showed how far we have come as an organisation to be able to do so, and still get something out of a day which was not what we wanted but it was something. That's much better than nothing.

on whether he would prefer to play Manchester City on a smaller pitch such as Meadow Park:
I have no fear at all playing them at the Emirates - we would do that any day of the week.

on how we deal with mistakes made by the team:
Support  - we work with athletes to try their very best in every situation and we see it at all levels of the game - sometimes mistakes happen. The worst thing you can do when those mistakes happen is to react in a way that’s it's not acceptable because what you create is a culture of fear of making mistakes, and that's not the football that we want to portray. We want to be a brave team that takes initiative, we want to be a team that dare to play out against pressure and solve situations. 

If you are going to have any chance of being that team, you have to have a culture of bravery, and that means that mistakes are going to be a part of it. A person who never does anything will maybe never commit any clear mistakes, but it's probably the biggest mistake you can do to be passive and not take initiative. So keep going, be supportive and as long as you're trying your very best, that's all I can ask for.

on our Gold Cup players' availability:
What’s been said about the US players is that they’re all going to be treated the same. They’ve been requested to travel in accordance with the FIFA regulations, which would be after our game against Manchester City. That’s what’s going to happen with Emily Fox and what we think is going to happen with the other US players as well.

on if playing a transitional game suits the team as opposed to playing against a low block:
I think we’ve been very good when time and space has been presented to us, so far this season. When you play against Man City, there’s not a way to always be in a low block because I think they’re a very good crossing team, probably the best crossing team in women’s football at the moment. If you allow them to cross the ball against you, they will eventually score. You need to restrict those moments in some ways, which means you also have to spend more time defending higher up the pitch. 

We’re a team that want to have the ball. We had too little of the ball in that game against them at Meadow Park earlier this season, for both mine and the team’s liking. As I said on that day, when things progress like they did in that game, we thought ‘let’s roll with that state of game and push them on transitions’, which we were successful on. As a team, we would definitely have liked to have had more of the ball in that game.

on Kyra Cooney-Cross’ role within the team:
I have huge belief in Kyra. I think she has some tremendous qualities. She’s especially very good on the ball with short passing and long passing, which make her a very potent player when you try to break down low blocks. You know as an opposition that you need to protect a lot of spaces in order to protect her potential passes. In those moments, when we brought her on against Tottenham and West Ham, it was mainly to get the advantage of her distribution and her set-pieces, which are world-class.

on what changes he would bring to the Conti Cup:
I can give you a couple of examples, but it’s not going to be all of them. I think how you use the suspensions between the league and the Conti Cup is an absolute joke. How you can get a red card in the league for two yellow cards, and you’ll be suspended for a Conti Cup game, and you can come back and play in the next league game, I don’t see how you [can] mix competitions, especially when not all teams in the league is a part of the competition at the group stage. That makes it even more weird. 

I think when you look at any competition, what you would like to have is clear rules. If that happens, this is the consequence of it, but what the Conti Cup is surrounded with is if this happens, let’s see what the consequences are going to be, which makes it very unpredictable for any team or player taking part in it. I can give you an example when Aston Villa fielded an ineligible player. Where I come from in Sweden, when you play with an ineligible player, there is a clear outcome. What happens if you do that, and I don’t think that’s difficult when you have a competition like this. You shouldn’t need to have a committee or a tribunal, having a meeting to do that on a case-by-case basis. 

Then we have the pitches to [add to] that; that’s maybe more of a women’s football problem than a Conti Cup problem, but still it affects the Conti Cup here and now, where you say if you don’t have a pitch that you can play on, because we know we’re playing these games really tight in comparison here with the FA Cup and the league. What is the plan? If you can’t play on your pitch, what is the plan? Do you have a reserve pitch that you can play on instead? Can we move the game to somewhere else? Or in this case here, no-one knows what’s going to happen if we can’t play on the original pitch.

That makes it really complicated because we now have to move the game to a different period where we have less player availability than before due to the Gold Cup. So now there is a game that was before the release period of the Gold Cup, inside the release of the Gold Cup and everyone is obviously very fine with that because that’s how we do things. But me, I’m looking at it from a competition perspective, and there’s room for improvement.

I don’t think it needs to be like that, because in Sweden, which has more severe weather than the UK, and it snows a lot, and there’s a lot of tough weather conditions and games are very rarely cancelled, and if they do get cancelled, they get played the day after on the pitch, or you move it to the reserve pitch to be able to do that, and I don’t get why we can’t play the game where it’s supposed to be played. So that was a couple of examples and if I get a chance to think of anything more clearly, then I might tell you next time we speak.

on how important it is for the team to make it to Wembley:
Very important. We’re super motivated, we would love to go to Wembley and play the final,  but we have a challenging, interesting, and exciting game against Manchester City that we first need to focus on.  

on what the atmosphere will be like with Gareth Taylor this weekend:
I haven’t thought about that. I think there’s been a lot of water flowing down the River Thames since that, so no idea.

on blue cards and sin bins potentially being introduced:
There is one rule in football that takes time into account as a consequence at the moment – it’s the amount of time that the goalkeeper can control the ball with his or her hands. That’s very clearly stipulated in the law of the game that it needs to be six seconds. If you see how that law is followed by the referees, I think that there’s room for improvement. When you talk about a game that is not managed by effective time, in order for a consequence that’s going to be in time, I can’t see how anything positive is going to come out of that. 

It’s just going to be another incentive for the team that gets a player temporarily sent off, slowing the time of ball in play time as much as possible during that period. At the moment, there are plenty of opportunities for that – for example, the goalkeeper standing with the ball in her hands for 30 seconds, when it’s only supposed to be six seconds. So no, I don’t hope that in that current proposal, it’s going to be trialled at any elite level. I think if you’re going to add anything with time restrictions in football, then you need to manage it much better and have it clearer on how you make sure that the ball is in play.

on if it would create more potential for time-wasting:
Oh yeah, of course. With the way the game is run at the moment, no doubt about it.