Every word of Jonas' pre-Aston Villa presser

Jonas Eidevall has faced the media ahead of our FA Women's Continental Tyres League Cup semi-final at home to Aston Villa.

Taking questions from the press at Sobha Realty Training Centre on Tuesday morning, Jonas looked ahead to Wednesday's 7.15pm kick-off at Meadow Park.

Here is everything he had to say on the following subjects...

on Aston Villa’s threat:
It’s a good side, Aston Villa. They have a lot to play for being in the semi-finals, just as we do, and apart from the game against Liverpool, their last game here which I think they’re disappointed with, I think you have seen a Villa side that has been progressing and developing after the new year. We need to be on our very best behaviour and performance tomorrow in order to get the result we want. 

on the latest team news:
It’s nothing that has changed since the game that we had against Tottenham, the only thing that’s changed is that Katie Reid, who we had in the squad then, is cup-tied because she was in the Conti Cup against Watford. But we also know for obvious reasons that it’s also the case for Aston Villa, they also have some cup-tied players.

on Beth Mead’s impact on the team:
She’s a high quality player and you’re absolutely right, she’s not slowing down. I hope she continues to develop and to elevate her game to the next level as well, so it’s really nice having her back and seeing her more and more integrated in the team. 

on his opinion on an ACL report produced by the Women and Equalities committee:
I haven’t read the report at all, but it seems like an interesting report so I probably need to take some time aside today or tomorrow to have a read on it. 

on selling 2,000 tickets for Chelsea away in just 15 minutes:
It doesn’t come as a surprise to me. I think if they made a bigger away allocation at Stamford Bridge I think we’d sell it out, so it’s just another sign of the massive support that we have and that’s of course incredible. 

on whether we’re embracing being trendsetters for attendances in the women’s game:
I think it’s great and I think it’s of course where we want to be and the home we want to create for our fans, but then as I said, I think there’s some parts where it’s probably something that all clubs can do and most parts of that is individually tailored to their club and their culture and their history and so on, but it has to start in a club where everyone is invested in both the men’s and women’s teams. Arsenal is very much like that. 

on having an average home attendance of 31,000 and having more games at Emirates Stadium in the future:
I think especially when you see the numbers where it comes from, I find that very interesting. In my first season we had an average attendance of less than 5,000 people at our home matches, then in my second season it might have been around 15,000. Like you’re saying, now it’s over 30,000 and the growth in the numbers is astonishing and I really see this as a snowball that keeps on rolling and keeps on growing, and it is really important that while I understand some other clubs might be seeing what we’re doing and maybe want to replicate that or learn things from it, we need to keep going as well because I don’t think we’ve seen our full potential yet either and it’s very much to provide this consistent home to our fans where we’re at now and that’s what we need to try and build on. 

on how important the Conti Cup is to us:
We’re still in two competitions and we would like to do our very, very best to win both of them. This is a really important game for doing that tomorrow. We’re going to do our very, very best to try to go to another final.

on Alessia Russo working with Kelly Smith:
We see details all the time in movement, in when to make the first movement, when to have the timing, what starting position you need to have and so on. It’s constantly working and perfecting those details. In the end they might be the difference between scoring many goals and even more goals.

on Amanda Ilestedt’s availability:
She’s still unavailable and I don’t have a clear update on the timeline yet for it. Hopefully I will have that soon.

on Katie McCabe playing right-back:
I think Katie has a similar mindset to what I have and, as it seems from your question, what you might have as well, and that’s to be saying that when there comes an opportunity to try to see something different, that you look forward to doing that because you know that you maybe learn something new from it. You might see new angles, new tools coming into play, so that was my original thinking with it. Let’s try to see how you get Katie’s qualities out in the right full-back position. I find she’s very much like that. Whenever I’ve been coming to her and asking her to play a position, I think I’ve ended up almost asking her about almost all positions except central defender, goalkeeper and the nine during my two and a half years here, she always comes in and says ‘no problem, I’ll play where you need me to be.’ She wants to understand the basics in the position and from there on we talk about how to get her strengths out of that position and she takes that on board. I think she’s very brave with that and never ever tried to be having a conversation like ‘I feel more comfortable playing in this position.’ She’s very much, ‘if that’s where the team needs me, I’m all for it and let’s make the best out of it.’ Me personally, I love that mentality. I really think that’s a winning mentality and a great way when you want to set the team culture.

on Katie scoring twice as a false nine in the Conti Cup before:
That’s good! It’s just central defender here now that might be the first time I get a no from her!

on the team performing better when there is more emotion:
I think that’s an interesting observation and I think that is sometimes the hardest part when you talk about to be able to perform consistently, it's about to be able to perform in that emotional state because that’s what you need to do, you need to create your most important game, the next one, all the time and you need to invest in that and that’s where I'm trying to think together with my staff and to the players' leadership group, being like 'how do we create that for every game we’re going into' because I think you have a great point to see when all the external factors have been there you’ve seen a team that’s been great to react to that and making the most of those occasions, but if you want to win a league for example, you need to be there week in week out and sometimes you will not have all these external factors going for you, so how do you then create those internal factors that provide that emotional state that is needed for the performance. So, it’s a very, very interesting take and I think that’s definitely a part of when we’re talking about the next level for this team and to improve consistency, is to be getting up to that emotional state every game.

on creating emotional states for every game:
I think motivation can come from many different places for it, like I said you can have external motivation, you can have internal motivation for it, what I’ve learnt is that I don’t put any real value if it's external motivation or internal motivation. Some people think internal motivation is much more noble for example than external motivation, but for me it’s just motivation. And with every motivation we find let's throw it in the fire and let that burn as bright and as powerful as possible so when we’re talking about processes from here it's about doing the work for every game and also then from me as a head coach to not become complacent, to not think that any game doesn’t need that motivation and I think that’s where we’re improving here as an organisation to find the word, to find the moment for example and to share something I would say before the game against Manchester United for example, we said 825 days. That was what we spoke about, the only thing we spoke about from a motivation perspective and 825 days was how many days it was since Arsenal Women last beat Manchester United Women. And that was all the motivation that game needed from then because that couldn’t be right. We had to rectify that. But another game needs something different, so we need to find the one thing or two things or the three things, everything we can throw in the fire  that makes us play better and that’s the task from now until the end of the season, and then of course onto the next season.

on if winning the cup would feel any different this year:
That’s the thing with winning, and I’ve been on the good side of winning in my head coach career and won a lot of trophies, and for me you’re always hungry for more of it. It’s not like you think that you’re done just because you won one trophy, the harder part in football and in life to be honest is to be on a high level for a long time, being consistent in doing that and finding new ways to elevate and to develop and that’s where I think when you look back at things that’s where you can find some real pleasure in doing and we now have that opportunity to defend a trophy and to win something back to back and for me that’s even more special than doing just one thing once, so let's really try to savour that moment and make the most out of it.