Jonas Eidevall spoke to the media ahead of our trip to Brighton & Hove Albion on Sunday evening in the Women's Super League.
The head coach fielded questions on Jens Scheuer's side, our January signings, and the addition of Patrick Winqvist as a set-piece coach.
Here's everything he had to say.
On the draw with Chelsea last weekend…
Like I said after the game, I think the atmosphere was great at the stadium and overall, we were happy with our performance. I think we deserved more from the game. I think if one team should have won the game, it should have been us. But there were also things that we needed to do better and we're working at those things. We know new players coming in January for us will be a lot about developing and growing, and that's what we're doing.
On our disappointment in conceding to the Blues so late on…
I think our ambitions are very clear: we want to go for trophies. We want to do our absolute best to do that. And, of course, we should be disappointed when we lose a lead in the 89th minute. So that part is natural. The important thing is to understand that from every game, there are things to learn. And if we can put that into practice in a week we can become better and more mature as a team.
On preparing for Brighton…
It's been as good as it can be when it's minus degrees in Great Britain. So we have to change around the training times a little bit, and so on, but the players have been great, the staff have been great. I think we have made the most of the opportunities
On facing a newly-managed Brighton…
Yeah, that's always a little bit different. Now they've played two games and they've played two different formations in those games, so they're keeping us guessing. The main focus is ourselves, of course. but there are some things we need to take into account. You can see that it's a really hard-working Brighton team and that’s worked well in the games they’ve played so far. So we know it's going to be a tough challenge going there and we're going to do our best.
On Jens Scheuer’s qualities as a coach…
What you could see in Bayern Munich and what you can see here in Brighton is that his teams have very clear ideas on how they want to do things - both in open play and in set pieces. They are very committed to trying to achieve that idea together. Like any coach, he will have to change those ideas depending on what squad he has to work with. He's new and even if he tried two formations already, I still think he learned a lot of things from the West Ham game.
He will try those things against us, so that is always the difficulty when you're playing a new coach because they will keep progressing quickly. You can't only base your predictions on their last game - you have to see the trajectory of where the team is going in order to try and see what's a plausible guess for how they will play against you.
On whether there will be more new signings in January…
Yeah, I hope so.
On bringing in a “prolific” goalscorer in the transfer window…
A consequence of having Beth and Viv injured for the rest of the season is that we’ve lost a lot of our historical scoring contribution in the existing player squad. Of course, we can work on ways where we can find that internally but my idea is also that we need to bring in someone external in order to help us with that.
On Mana Iwabuchi’s loan move to Spurs…
The process was that Mana needed to be in an environment where she played more than she did here. And then obviously, with a player like Mana, there are a lot of interested clubs. It's not really my business to decide which club we make the transfer with. That's the players and the club that do that work.
On whether home-grown rules affect our recruitment strategy…
If I'm completely honest with you, I'm aware that there is a rule, but we have an organisation where other people have that as their responsibility. Our main priority is always to look in our own academy first and after that, it's to look in the local area to try and find the best fit there. So no matter what the rule is, we try to find players, first and foremost, who have a natural connection to this area and to Arsenal.
On how we can get more female coaches in the WSL…
I think the question is wrong. It's not the WSL that's the problem. The problem is that you see, in all the technical staff, in all the professional clubs in the men's side, how few female technical staff you have in the game. It's incredible when you see in all other parts of society that you can have female prime ministers, you can have female presidents, but you can't have a female coach coaching in the Premier League, for some reason. Why?
I think female coaches are single-handedly the most under-tapped resource in professional football. There is no reason why you can be female and not be a top coach. You're absolutely right with the numbers, that it's a big problem that there are not more female coaches. But that's not the WSL in isolation, that's the whole game. I can't get my head around how that is possible. Still, nothing happens and people are very content with that. Nothing is happening.
On the addition of Patrick Winqvist as a set-piece coach…
We have gone through a process where we had set-pieces coaching combined with other responsibilities. The thinking behind bringing Patrick is to make it clearer that we have one person who first and foremost, takes the responsibility for the set pieces. And then if talent time allows, they also can help the technical team with other stuff, but it's to clarify and essentially put more resources into that area.
On Patrick giving him his first job as a coach…
I was a very young coach at the time, and I reached out to Malmo FC Youth Academy, where Patrick was working as the academy manager. They were advertising for people to help with their initial stages, like under-5s and under-7s and so on. I was still in high school but I reached out and wanted to take part. What I found that was fascinating wasn’t that he gave me a role there, it was how much you can grow with responsibility.
Once you get a coaching job, for example, and somebody trusts you to take care of certain things, that helps you grow a lot as a person. When I've been reflecting on my own coaching journey, none of that would ever have been possible without me being given responsibility by people who, in the beginning, had no reason to trust me. We didn't know each other, but they still trusted me. They get a feeling that they can trust you and they give you responsibility. Then, of course, it's what you do with it. So it's something that Patrick has inspired me with. The way I try to live as a head coach today is that I try to give people that I work with responsibility as well because I think it brings the best out of people.
On new goalkeeper Sabrina D’Angelo’s long ball distribution…
I've seen Sabrina play for a long time since she played in Sweden. She's an all-around quality goalkeeper but those distribution qualities she has have added something to the team. That's always very pleasant as a coach because it gives you that opportunity to select players based on who can fit the match that we have ahead.
On Gio Queiroz’s return to the squad…
Gio is a really, really talented player. She's very explosive and she's good on the ball. I think she can hurt almost any defence that she plays against. What she needs in order to start games for us is consistency. Consistency in training and then it's about building that through game minutes. That's what we tried to achieve by loaning her out to Everton. To be completely honest, I had hoped that when she returned to Arsenal, she would come here and be ready to practice fully and be a 90-minute player.
But because our situation changed and maybe because of how things were at Everton, that's not the case yet. So I see all the potential in Gio but we need to have patience with her and make good decisions. I think that's gonna require a little bit of time and a big commitment from both the staff and the player to get that right.
On team availability…
Nothing to add.
Copyright 2024 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
