Eidevall on leadership, player development, Pelova

We've got just four games remaining of our Women's Super League season, but Jonas Eidevall remains focused on one fixture at a time.

Third-place Manchester City remain three points ahead of us in the table, although we have the advantage of two games in hand starting with a trip to Brighton & Hove Albion on Wednesday night. 

Our head coach spoke to the media on Tuesday and he was asked about the latest team news, leaders in our squad, Victoria Pelova's fine form and the development of Frida Maanum.

on the latest team news:

We’re going to go out and train today after the press conference and of course that’s going to give us some answers about who is going to be available to play tomorrow or not. I can’t give you any more updates on that. We’re doing everything to get people back on the pitch and this day is another opportunity for some players to progress. 

on Liverpool defeating Manchester City at the weekend:

I don’t care. We have four more games and we need to take one game at a time. We need to do our best in every game and if we do, then we can finish as high as possible. That’s the only thing we can control. It’s boring but it’s where we need to put our focus. 

on leadership within his squad through Beattie and Taylor: 

I am happy to be more specific about what leadership means in these situations. For me, when you have external factors like pressure to get results, you will look at players who might lose focus on what we are going to do as a team. Players with leadership and experience will be able to stick to the game plan and they will often lead by example and by the way they communicate.

Both Jen and Jodie are great examples of players like that. They have a really clear understanding of what the team needs to do and they understand their own roles within that and they live it 100%. That is so important.

on Kelly Smith re-joining our coaching staff:

Kelly Smith combines everything we want to be. She had this great technique, vision and game intelligence as a footballer. But she also played with her heart on her sleeve in every situation. She embodied as a player everything this team should have the vision to be. It is great to have her inside our environment and culture to try to shape that and not having a coach that is just about the tactical or the technical but can have a holistic view and everyone that knows their Arsenal history knows she lived that day in and day out on the pitch.

on bouncing back from defeat against Wolfsburg:

I was so happy, I watched Leicester’s games against Liverpool and Reading and I knew it was a totally different Leicester team to the one we played earlier in the season when we played them away. Of course, you start in your mind worrying about coming from the Wolfsburg game on Monday with the application we showed and everything it meant. We played an opponent who had really changed so it would have been easy for the players to have expected something else.

But I think we prepared really well and sold in the narrative about what kind of team we were playing against and what kind of game it was going to be, players were there mentally and able to execute that. That was never an easy task, I am glad that we solved it. But now we have to go onto the next one because tomorrow is the same because it is going to be a really tough game again.

on Victoria Pelova’s best position:

You want Pelova on the ball so where you put her in the team has to be in a role where you involve her a lot. You could tell against Leicester how comfortable she is with the ball, how comfortable she is in 1 v 1 situations and the good weight she has on her passes. Then depending on how we play, if that is from a wider position where she is dropping in and coming more central or whether she is starting from a central position, she can do both.

It is probably going to be like it was with Frida [Maanum] where we will see in the coming periods where Victoria’s strengths will really flourish into one position. That is why it is so interesting working with players to see where you can work out those details. We can all see the talent and the qualities she has and now it is to see where we can really put that into as much efficiency for the team as possible.

on Frida Maanum’s development:

She has been incredible. Frida is a real success story this year. She started not playing so much, I remember when she came on in the away game at Ajax the energy and the determination she played with. We had a conversation after this and I told her: ‘if you keep going like this, you are going to play, it will be impossible not to play you.’ When I see this in a player I want to play that player all the time. She proved that right, after that, from Lyon away onwards.

She put a lot of hard work in, it is great to see a young player come in and grow as an athlete and as a person. It also shows why sometimes it is so hard to just look at statistics when you look at young players. I think when you see Frida in Sweden, you saw she had a great shot but she didn’t score many goals. When you see it from the statistical perspective. That is something we could have held against her when we looked at her in the number 10 position because you ask whether that would contribute enough points for the team.

That is where you need to look at the potential when you work with young players, you have to see the qualities and now you see she is contributing a lot of points playing that position. That is very interesting when you work with young players.