Every word of Jonas' pre-Spurs press conference

Jonas Eidevall held his pre-Tottenham Hotspur press conference at the Sobha Realty Training Centre, and you can read everything he had to say ahead of the WSL clash below.

The boss was asked about the latest team news, the competitive nature of the North London Derby and how the club has worked to build attendances at Emirates Stadium. 

Here is everything he had to say:

on squad injuries…

Okay, so let's take them in order. With Leah Williamson, she's progressing really well. Because it's a muscle injury, we need to be cautious and take every step well but she is progressing well and she's very much in contention for Sunday.

Let’s start with the bad news then, that's with Viv Miedema. She requires a minor knee surgery and that is gonna have her off the pitch for several weeks. We will have an update on that after the surgery and when we see how she's progressing. 

It's better news with Vic Pelova because she's very much in the same situation as Leah Williamson, she's progressing really well as well and is very much in contention for Sunday. Katie McCabe is also progressing well and she's also very much in contention for Sunday.

Amanda Ilestedt is back with us here now, back with the squad. But the game on Sunday will come too early for her.

on recalling Katie Reid from her Watford loan…

It's a number of reasons to be honest, but one of them is of course, how the squad is looking. Then we're looking internally first and see 'What do we have?' We see a Katie Reid who has been developing really, really well at Watford and I think the first team experience has been a great thing for her. 

We thought this was a great opportunity to have our eyes on her more now as a first-team squad player and from there on, decide what the next move is for her and her career.

on Lina Hurtig’s absence…

There is not any clarity on it, which makes that hard to predict when she will be able to return to play. So yeah, potentially, she won't be returning this season, but we don't know.

on Caitlin Foord’s loading…

Well, I think Caitlin was used in the first game for Australia. I think she played 45 minutes. And she played 15 minutes against Manchester United. So I think if there was any club that was de-loading the player, it was Arsenal. She played more minutes for Australia than we did in the last game. So that's sometimes the decision that we need to take as a coach.

We know that on the fullback positions and the wide forward positions, we're a little bit light, especially here with the Gold Cup and the unavailability of players because of that. In retrospect, it's always easier to see who was going to be able to start and what not. 

But what I think is very pleasing when I look at it, is how we work together with both players and staff. We're constantly having these discussions. We're trying to juggle that. It is really important for us to have good availability across the whole season and be smart with our decisions. And I think the decision to not load Caitlin as much against Manchester United was probably a really, really good decision and it probably enabled her to play more minutes for Australia as well.

on opportunities to force high turnovers against Spurs…

I think that goal [in the last Spurs match] very much shows the risk and reward in football. I don't think we pressed aggressively enough in that moment, so we allowed them to get out. It's probably the only time that they really got out during the whole game trying to do that. I think we forced them to a lot of turnovers in that game as well. 

We were not very good at converting from those turnover moments. And these things will be important against a very organised team. You will need to take the moments that they are disorganised with some real efficiency because it might not happen a lot of times during the game. So you have to try to force that to happen a few more times, but then also make sure that you use them.

In football, it's always going to be hard to break down an organised team. So that's going to be one part in order to do it but then take advantage of the disorganised situations and we didn't do that well enough in the last game against them. But I think we created quite a lot of disorganised situations.

on playing the second game in a row at Emirates Stadium…

Yeah, I heard we have 166 tickets left so whoever can rush and be lucky and get those last tickets. It’s incredible, it’s great, and it very much shows that it’s not a one-off. It’s less than 12 months ago that we sold out the stadium for the first time for the Women’s team against Wolfsburg in the Champions League semi-final. Everyone felt what a huge achievement that was and now it’s about having a great football team. 

We’re not only searching for the highs, but we’re also searching for consistency, we’re searching for sustainability, we’re searching for creating a culture at Emirates Stadium week-in, week-out, and this shows great progress in doing so. So, now we all need to play our part in that, especially us as a team, to deliver a performance that matches the great support from the fans, and I think we can lift each other to new heights.

on our squad rising to the occasion…

Yeah, but I think we played the occasion as well and we did that to a positive. I think if you see two seasons ago, we didn’t use the crowd very well at Emirates Stadium. Now, we’re using the crowd much, much better and the atmosphere is phenomenal. 

I think that’s something that we can really use as a strength as a home team and make that our fortress together with our fans, and it should be a very unwelcoming place to away teams. We need to create that with the way that we are playing, our fans need to create that with their passion and their energy, and if we both can do that, I’m sure we can give ourselves the best chance of performing on Sunday.

on a competitive north London derby…

I think the league is the most competitive that it’s ever been, as I said at the start of the season. I think Spurs as a team, and this is always which glasses you’re looking through, if you’re looking very short-term and you saw Spurs from a pure results perspective this season, yes it’s a very improved Spurs.

But I think you could also argue that it’s probably the same level of Spurs that it was two seasons ago, when they were one of the teams that were challenging for a top-four spot in the league. It’s one of those clubs that has those capabilities of doing so, so I would say more last season it was an off-season for them and that they’re back to their actual level.

on the nature of Viv Miedema’s injury…

We have good communication with all the national teams that we work with, but we also have to have a lot of respect for the autonomy in the decision-making. The Netherlands were playing some really important games for them - both for a Nations League trophy and maybe more importantly for an Olympic qualification, and they also needed to make the decisions that were best for them.

But what’s important in all these conversations is that I always think we put the player in the forefront and we try to find solutions that are best for the player and we need to cooperate. She doesn’t need the surgery because of those 45 minutes she played against Spain. She would have needed surgery anyway, so it was nothing that the Dutch team did that complicated or made the situation worse. It was a situation that needed to be fixed anyway.

on the challenge of player availability after the international break…

I think the starting point is where you put your focus and we’ve got a lot of practice on that last spring. I am a big believer that you can either have excuses or you can have results, I don’t think you can have both and what you were listing there were a lot of potential excuses and that’s not where I put my focus on.

We had some really, really good players at home that are available and we need to get the most out of them and yes it’s going to be pushier now. We’re not going to have a situation where we’re going to be able to play two different starting line-ups, in the League and in the Conti Cup as we have been used to doing this season.

It's going to be much much less rotation between here and it’s going to be a higher demand on the players but we’ve built an organisation to deal with as well and we’ve built players to be able to deal with those situations also. That's what’s asked now and then we step back to deal with it.

on Michelle Agyemang’s injury…

We don’t have any specific update yet, we don’t think it's something that’s going to take her out for a very long time, but she is going to be sidelined for several weeks for it but hopefully not more than that.

on what the club is doing to drive consistently big crowds…

I think one thing that stands out is that the whole club at every level is invested in that. We have a club at the very top, and one of the ambitions is to accelerate the growth of women’s football and you can really see how that is influencing every decision on its way, I think that is very important to start with that, to make it a real investment.

Then I think what makes Arsenal special and the belonging to the community and the connection to the fans, it's one of those things that if you could bottle that and sell it, you’d probably end up earning a lot of money on that but that’s the special circumstances and all the history coming together with the community and Arsenal that allows that, and there is where I think that other clubs that they need to find their solution too. 

But I think it starts with the whole club being invested, that has to be the starting point and then from there on how you create that feeling, that passion for the team, every club has to find their own identity, their own culture and that’s going to be different for Arsenal than other teams, of course.