Ahead of our Barclays Women's Super League opener against Manchester City, Jonas Eidevall has held his press conference at Sobha Realty Training Centre.
Our head coach fielded questions from the press around the upcoming fixture at Emirates Stadium, team news and pressure to start the season well.
BUY TICKETS FOR SUNDAY'S GAME.
Here is everything he had to say:
on whether this is the best way to start a season…
I think there have been so many exciting games during my years here against Manchester City. Every game, apart from the first one, has been decided by very thin margins. They have been exciting games to be involved in. I think they’ve been exciting games to watch, both as a supporter and as a neutral spectator. So yeah, why not? It’s a great way to start the season.
on both our men’s and women’s teams facing Man City on the same day…
We take great inspiration from the amazing work that they do over at the men's side. I think very much in a club you work side by side, all details matter. We obviously want to do our part in bringing good momentum to the club but ultimately I think everyone needs to focus on on their own games and their own responsibilities. That's going to have the best outcome.
on whether he had to lift the squad after the Hacken result…
We're a group that is very good moving forward and very good looking towards the next challenge. I agree with you in that it was a disappointing result. I think we could have put on a better performance as well in that game. We know what we did and what we need to do better and differently, and we're all on the same page on that. That was important for today in that we have a really clear collective idea of what we need to do differently, and from then on, we now move onto City with 100% focus
on whether trophies will make a successful season…
Without progress, I don't think it's possible to deliver major trophies. So while that has to be our goal as an end product, our focus has to be on the daily tasks of training the best you can today, preparing in the best way possible for the Manchester City game and playing that game the best way possible. We can't let our minds already rush to May and think about finals and think about league tables and how that is going to look like, because that will never lead to success. So our mindset needs to be about daily progress. It needs to be about long-term programs and if we're doing that, that's also going to lead to trophies. That's my big belief.
on the pressure to deliver…
Sometimes people say pressure is a privilege. I go one step further and I say pressure, for me, is a necessity in order to reach high performance. I'm grateful that we have pressure on us, because I truly believe that is going to form the foundation to get the best out of individuals, but also as a team.
I want us as a team to feel like that. We need to make the most out of every day that we are together and time is a scarcity in football. It's scarcity during the season. The scarcity between seasons. No player is going to have a career forever. The career is limited in time. So of course, you need to feel the need to make the most out of every opportunity that presents itself. So I'm really happy to hear that mindset, and that's the mindset we should have as a team.
on Leah Williamson’s availability…
She is okay. I don't really have all the information yet regarding the whole squad, but when it comes to Leah Williamson, there was a problem that meant that she was not in an ideal position to start the game against Hacken. That should not be the case now on Sunday.
on other team news…
No, I don't know [about] anyone else.
on Amanda Ilestedt’s new baby…
We're so happy for Amanda and for Rainer, her partner, and their very cute little baby, Mila. Right now, they need to stay together as a family. Of course, there is a plan to return to play. Amanda wants to return to play, but we need to be guided about how she's feeling and when she's ready to return over here in the UK and start taking part in training. Then we'd be ready to welcome her.
on balancing the mental side of things between the Champions League qualifiers...
Have you seen City play? It’s not hard for me to keep focused on what we need to do in that game! Manchester City is a great football team and there is no way that I’m going to put any attention to anything else than what we need to do in order to be competitive in that game. That’s not a concern at all for me at the moment.
on if there is frustration that two Champions League games fall on either side of the first WSL game of the season...
No, it’s not. We knew that well in advance and we’ve been able to plan for that also. I think the games coming now, it’s been plenty of time now from the Olympics, the last international block to now, so if you want to play in the European competitions you need to be able to play on weekdays, you need to be able to play weekends and if we go into the group stage then it’s going to be completely like that.
on welcoming Vivianne Miedema back to Emirates Stadium...
Viv has such a great history in the club. We wish her the best, I wish her the best. I truly hope that she has a really successful season because I think she deserves that. One of the big problems for us with letting her go is now she plays for our competitor and we know that she’s a very strong opponent against us. We need to focus on our part during the game. We need to make our things as good as possible and from here on that needs to be our focus.
on using our knowledge of Viv to find ways to stop her...
In football, there are not many secrets. When you see City play or us play, you get what you see. City are very distinct in the way that they’re playing, they have a very clear game model and they’re very good at executing that and of course, it comes the same to individual players. It’s not so much knowing beforehand what they’re going to do, that’s not the secret. It’s about being good enough in the moment to stop that and with Viv, it probably works both ways. Yes, we know a lot about her, but she also knows a lot about us, so it’s going to be who applies that knowledge best.
on City’s strength in attack and how to deal with that...
They have a lot of attacking talent. So do we. They’re also going to have 11 players on the pitch, so will we at the beginning of the game. We played against City a number of times and we know it’s going to be important as a team to get control, to get momentum in these games. We know what things are going to be important off the ball and on the ball and then it comes down to on Sunday to have real quality in those moments.
on playing title rivals and how important results are...
Every game you play in the league, it’s important to get results. If it only would be the games against the presumable top teams, then we would’ve won the league last season because we took nine points against the top three. If I’m not wrong, I think the other top teams only took four points. So if that would be the only thing that would be important here in the whole season, it would’ve been easy last year, but the proof was it was not. Every game is important and you get three points, so no different on Sunday.
on players preferring a busy run of games to training...
Me personally, yes. That’s how I live my life. I go game to game. I prepare every game, no matter what opponent, the absolute best way possible and I expect the same thing from my players and my staff around me. We leave no stone unturned, and we’re relentless in the way that we prepare and deliver, so I feel like that all the time. It’s all cup finals for us playing and yes that’s definitely my preference.
on needing to treat games against teams lower in the league as cup ties...
Football is like that as a sport. It’s a low-scoring sport and, after the game, it’s really easy to say it was details that were the difference, but before the game you know it’s going to consist about so many moments, you need to treat every single one of those moments like it’s the game’s deciding one. Then it might turn into that.
The same goes for the different games you’re playing. After the season it might be easy to say that was the game that you lost the league to. You know that once you can see the whole league table and you have the whole story but the mindset has to be that every game is the most important one and that has to go into our preparation, our logistics, the way we play the games, the way we act during the games and so on.
on Steph Catley and Lina Hurtig...
We have a timeline. It’s not official, but they will not be available for Sunday.
on Mariona Caldentey…
She's a great addition to the way that we are playing. I think what I do see, if I take the Hacken game as an example, the front five we started with in that game, if we take them just as a front five, they played zero minutes together, and that's the part where we now find out things every time we play. We learn details about each other, about movement, how we can use, how we can cooperate, what preferences a player has and how we can get the best out of that. And we need to learn quickly.
That comes back to the first question. Is this season about progress, not the end product, it's not about progress, but our daily mindset has to be about progress. We have to be curious, we have to learn, we have to get better every day, we have to find out all the small things we can do to make things tick a little bit better. So yes, I think Mariona has been great coming in, but it doesn't mean that we don't have things to learn about her or she doesn't have things to learn about the other players who play alongside her. So it's work in motion.
on progressing against teams with low blocks…
This is the thing with progress. It would be so easy if it would be linear. I think BK Hacken was a step backwards for us when it looked like that, and that's what I meant when I said before, we know what we did in that game, and we also very much know what we need to do better in order to do that. So BK Haken was a step backwards. But sometimes you take a step backwards so you can go forward.
on how impressed he has been by our young players…
It's obviously been a pre-season where we talked about having a fast start. We needed to manage a lot of different situations in pre-seasons with players coming from international camps and having various time off, and we needed to involve our academy heavily in that, and what a great part they've played. Some players played a lot like Katie Reid, and I have to say, I've been so impressed with her, both in training and with the games she's played. I think she's really put sort of a strong foundation for the season, and that's the reason why we keep her as one of the four central defenders in the squad as well.
But to your point, it's also been a lot of other good performances from young players, and for some of them, like Michelle Agyemang or Maddy Earl, the right decision has been to go out and play first-team football elsewhere, outside Arsenal. For some other players, like Vivienne Lia, Freya Godfrey, Laila Harbert, Katie Reid, it's best to stay with us and to train and compete and then we will reassess in January.
on whether our senior squad has helped push them to the next level…
I think that's what's great with this group, the competition is so high, but in combination with that, so is the climate of learning and sharing experiences and offering that support the young players. So yeah, I think it's a great environment for them to step into.
on welcoming over 40,000 people at Emirates Stadium on Sunday…
That's incredible, and we talked about that a little bit today and said that this is the first women's team that will come to Emirates and have that as their main home stadium. And that's credit to a lot of players and staff that is here now that has made that happen, but it's also credit to all the history and all the players and staff that was here before us.
It really feels like that when we zoom out, that that is a groundbreaking moment, and it's a privilege, but now with that privilege, it also comes a responsibility, and now we need to do something really great with that opportunity that has been presented to us, and we need to do that together with our supporters. Sunday is the start of that.
on whether we considered bringing in another wide player…
I know this might come as a surprise when sometimes I hear people's opinions when we let players go, or why we don't sign more players, but the easy answer is that we have a budget. We don't have unlimited funds. Some things I get a yes to when I want, some things like any football manager, I get a no to. We have to constantly adapt to that reality and sometimes that means that we might go into a transfer window with one player less than ideal. Sometimes we have exactly those players. It's always priorities and how we spend our resources.
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.
