Jonas Eidevall has made a hugely impressive start to life in north London.
Our head coach made it five wins from five in the Women’s Super League on Sunday with a 3-0 victory over Everton - but above all else, it’s our performances that have provided promise and optimism for the remainder of the season.
Eidevall faced the media after the final whistle and this is what he said:
on Lia Walti, Anna Patten and Jen Beattie being unavailable…
The prognosis is that they are all short term, they all have a chance to play on Thursday.
on Heath, McCabe and Miedema causing Everton trouble on the left…
When you watch the game you see that we were pressing Everton to get them to go over to their left and when you do that, you open up spaces on their right and we saw that many times today and when you have the quality of players you are talking about there, yes, you will cause problems for the opponent. We were able to get many two versus one and three versus two situations on that side, especially in the first half.
on preparing for Everton to play a back five or a back four…
We prepared for both, yes. Our analyst, Johnny Dixon, showed us that it’s pretty equal between when they play a back five or a 4-4-2 diamond so we prepared for both scenarios. But to be honest, it didn’t make a huge difference to our plan. We still looked at exploiting the same spaces whether they were playing a back four or a back five. Sometimes they change in game too so we needed to be prepared for both scenarios and we were.
on Katie McCabe’s versatility…
She’s so versatile and to be honest, she has played a little bit as an attacking midfielder for us this year as well. I think she’s been brilliant when she has been doing that as well. In all those positions (winger, full-back and attacking midfield), she will give you the pace, give you the dribbles with her left foot and obviously her crosses and finishes. She can play in a lot of different positions. What I like about Katie is that she can bring different things to the team depending on where you have her in the starting position. So, as a coach, sometimes you can fit her into a position where you think it will fit the match picture.
on McCabe’s set piece delivery to the back post…
With structure around the set-pieces, to be honest, the staff have been working with set-pieces worked with the team already last season as well. From our part, it’s our goalkeeper coach, Sebastian Barton, and our assistant coach, Leanne Hall, that makes most of the work around set-pieces. They also work with it especially last spring, when Sebastian was appointed. I am also having an eye on it and it’s a process together, but those are the two that are working with it in detail for preparation and execution. It’s really nice to see that we score so many goals from it and we are solid defensively so far, so I think that’s important if you want to be a winning team.
on playing good football and getting results…
I would say getting results without good football is boring and playing good football without results is pointless. We are happy to be able to do both.
on returning to winning ways…
I hoped we would show a good reaction, yes. We came together and looked at the game, why it happened, what we need to do better and what we needed to learn from. There was no blame, we use it as a lesson learned and we go forward.
on what we learned from Barcelona defeat…
It comes down to two things, being able to defend better and having to defend less. It’s hard to defend against Barcelona but the more you have to defend, the harder it is. We have to be better with the ball so that we don’t spend so long defending.
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