Jonas Eidevall was delighted by the performances from our rotating squad as we strode to a clinical 9-0 victory over Leeds in the Women's FA Cup fourth round.
"All in all, I'm happy with the performance, especially our second-half display," said our head coach. "I thought we moved the ball really well and we had good quality and also got in good positions. We're happy with today."
Victoria Pelova and Kathrine Kuhl, who joined us in January, both scored on their full club debuts and were impressive throughout with skill and creativity. Alongside them, Brazilian winger Gio made a bright start to life as a Gunner and our Academy forward, Michelle Agyemang, got off the mark for her childhood club with a superbly taken goal.
"I'm really excited about all of them. You can see the qualities that they bring. Their technical ability is great but you can also see that they have good game intelligence, because they learn our principles quickly.
"Some of those things are of course new to them, but I can see in training and I saw today in the match that the more they get exposed, the better they get it. I'm excited to see where that can lead to."
Eidevall made seven changes to the starting XI who played in midweek against Aston Villa and proceeded to make four changes at half-time against Leeds, yet our team cohesion never suffered.
"It shows the quality of the squad. It also shows the importance of having a good training environment so everyone is prepared. But also, one of the values we have as a team is to be 100%. No matter what the situation: 100%. And we lived that value today and that pleases me a lot."
With two cup wins under our belt this week, our Gunners' focus turns back to the Women's Super League and an away trip to West Ham next Sunday.
"[Our focus is] to try and win the game. Of course, we know it will be a difficult game. [West Ham] are very physical and I think they're very front-footed in the way that they play. We saw here when we were playing against them, even if we won in the end, it wasn't a game without challenges for us. So we need to be very prepared for that.
"We have a big week coming up with West Ham and then we play Man City twice, so we'll need a lot of players ready for that. We need to work hard in training so we are ready for it."
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