Jonas Eidevall has urged his players to rediscover their enjoyment of playing the game when they head to Villa Park to take on Aston Villa.
We have the chance to return to winning ways in the Women's Super League on Sunday after tasting defeat at Chelsea last time out, and speaking in his pre-match press conference, the boss was asked about squad morale in training this week and our motivation to bounce back.
"When you have a performance like that, everyone is disappointed and we needed to take the first days after that to connect, reflect and learn" said Eidevall. "After that you need to look forward. You need to remember who you are, what you want to achieve when you are playing and you need to put your focus on that. You need to shift the mindset and start looking forward - once you learn what you need to learn, you start looking forward and that's what we have been doing.
"I think sometimes when you lose and you try to bounce back after a poor performance, you're all about the hard work and hard skills and you tend to forget about the soft skills and the enjoyment that is so important. If you want to play great football, you need to have enjoyment as well, and have players that can feel free and don't need to overthink moments. I think that's been a really important element to bring into our practice this week."
Our head coach was also questioned on Villa's tactical flexibility. We faced them earlier this month when we booked our place in the Conti Cup final with a 4-0 success at Meadow Park, but Jonas has attempted to drill into his players that they too will have to be savvy enough to match up to whatever our opponents throw at them.
"You can have an educated guess [on how they will line up]," said Eidevall. "In the Conti Cup semi-final they played a back four in the first half, they played a back three in the second half, and they were consistent playing that against Everton. How will they start? How will they finish against us? I think it's probably likely that they will play a back three, but we need to prep for both. And I think that's when you want to be consistent as a team and you need to consistently perform as a team.
"Whatever the situation, do we have a clear idea and picture of how we solve that? They play a back three, we know how to play against that. They’re a back four, we know how to play against that. They’re a low block, we know how to play against that. They’re pressing high, we know how to play against that. It comes back to that and that team maturity.
"Do we, as a team and a collective, have a clear idea of what we're playing against, and how we play against that? If you have that, then you perform consistently, but the moment you don't have the same idea about the situation, that's when inconsistencies start coming into the performances."
Read every word from Jonas' pre-Villa press conference
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