Jonas Eidevall was pleased to see our side progress to the second round of UEFA Women's Champions League qualifiers on Saturday evening.
After the full-time whistle, our head coach discussed the performance, what we're focusing on going forward and what a boost our supporters bring.
Here is everything he had to say:
on the result...
The most important thing is that we are through. I think that the performance from a goal-scoring, opportunity-creation perspective is a quite good performance, but we need to score the second goal earlier. That would have made the second half a much different story than it was, and that's probably the slight disappointment from today.
on what we need to learn from a frustrating second half...
That we need to combine being patient with, of course, being attacking-minded. I think a difference between the first and second half is that in the second half, we lost a little bit of patience and we went into shorter and shorter attacks.
I think that plays a major role in how we defend: they got a lot of energy in the counter-attacking game because we didn't make them work so hard in the defending moments. So I think that is a learning point. Of course, we want to be more effective and score the second goal, but even if you only have a one-goal lead, you just need to remain patient, not be too worried about the outcome, and trust the process. I think we could have had a little bit easier journey in the second half.
on what to focus on for the next tie...
It's another 10, 11 days where we can build. Now we've got to used to playing in front of our great supporters and that is great, but it's now 180 minutes of football. We're coming into a really busy period of the season, and we're going to be playing four games - four competitive games - within a short period of time.
Starting with the Champions League, but then the WSL, Champions League and WSL again. So we're going to need to have a squad ready to play those games. It's going to be some really important days working, getting more players to play minutes and being ready, and then we're hopefully at a great place.
on how much our amazing support will drive us on...
It's going to give us energy. It's going to give us momentum and supporters have been absolutely tremendous during our first two games of the season. Even the preseason games have been like that so it's just such an important part for us.
I hope they enjoy the atmosphere at the stadium. We need everyone coming back again, one for when we go next time here to go on with playing the Champions League, but definitely also for [Man] City at the Emirates. I think we need to get as close to a sellout there as possible. We need to be loud. We really need to create that home advantage in order to get ourselves to a great start in the league as well.
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