We face Leicester City in our second match of the Barclays Women’s Super League campaign fresh off the back of a storming victory over Hacken to qualify for the UEFA Women's Champions League group stages.
Jonas Eidevall spoke with the press ahead of the contest at the King Power Stadium and discussed Manuela Zinsberger’s development, building momentum and what to expect from our trip to Leicester.
Here is everything our head coach had to say:
on the challenge of facing Amandine Miquel’s Leicester team:
They also have a clear identity, it’s a little bit different but a very clear identity. I think they had a strong transfer window, they have a strong squad, Leicester, I think if you see them as a team, it’s one of the teams that continuously building here in the WSL and they continue to make this competition harder and harder, which is good because it’s a challenge but it also makes it difficult for us because it’s going to be a tough opponent for us and you need to have a really good structure, both in defence and offence, if you’re going to beat them and we just need to go back to last season and remember being there, 2-0 down, which we had to turn around, to remind ourselves of the importance of being switched on from the start on Sunday.
on building momentum after winning against Hacken:
What we spoke about before the season was that going into knockout games earlier on has forced us into having a fast start to the season. That’s why we went to the US, that’s where we started to challenge ourselves early on in the season to get answers. Now, it’s still about here, when we play games, to get answers in these games, to learn more about relationships, to learn more about what is working, what is not working and understanding processes like the way we played against Hacken last week, that was a step backwards. Now what’s important is what we do with that information, can we turn that into learnings? Can we turn that into better performances? And I think both the City game and the second leg against Hacken have been steps in the right direction. But we need to keep on going and Sunday is going to be a tough test for us, it’s the last game of a really intense block before we get a little bit of time to breathe, so we need to keep on going and we cannot relax now.
on the progress Manuela Zinsberger:
I think Manu is really developing her leadership qualities at the moment. I think it really shines through how strong of a leader she is, how good of a communicator she is and how confident she is with communicating the way she thinks and that part is not just in the goalkeeping group but in the whole squad, I think it’s really shining through. We have great competition on the goalkeeping position. I think Daphne [van Domselaar] has been off to a tough start with injuries and not being able to train fully in the beginning and it’s just now that she has been able to get full training under her belt. We will need to have a really strong goalkeeping group with the games we will have in front of us.
on any updates to Leah Williamson’s fitness:
No.
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.
