Every word from Jonas' pre-Watford presser

Sunday sees us get our Women's FA Cup campaign underway at Meadow Park against Wartford, and ahead of the game Jonas Eidevall held his pre-match press conference at London Colney.

As usual, he discussed numerous topics heading into the cup tie, including new signing Emily Fox, more transfer business, the importance of the cup and players returning from injury.

Here is everything he had to say:

on wearing the No More Red shirts this weekend:
It’s the third season that we're running the campaign but it's the first time for the women's team to wear the No More Red jerseys, and I think that's a really powerful message. It's such a visual campaign and a lot of the message is in the match jersey.

I think one part that is really nice is that we're able to have both first teams wearing the jersey, but also secondly to see that it's not a one-off campaign, that it’s the third consecutive season that we're running the campaign. I think in order to change things, you need to be able to invest long-term in them as well and it's been really pleasing to see the club and adidas have been willing to do that.

on our training camp in Portugal and the arrival of Emily Fox:
It was really nice being in Portugal and getting time to work together again after a Christmas break. It was also nice to see the sun and to get a little bit of vitamin D, so I think we got off to a really good start.

In Emily, I’m really excited to see what she can do here in the team. I think she has a lot of attributes that make her a very strong full-back for us - she's good on the ball, she's comfortable with both her right and left foot, she can play wide and she can play inside the pitch. She has an explosiveness that comes in as a real key strength both to handle one v one situations, but also transition moments in the game. As always, when you’re coming into a new team there’s going to be a period of adaptation, but I think so far she has settled in very well. 

on our best situation when the transfer window closes:
I think we need to cover for one particular situation and that is the Gold Cup coming up in February and March. We have a very high likelihood of one of our goalkeepers being selected for that and we can't really predict how the availability is going to be for the rest of our goalkeepers during that period, or how long that period is going to be. So ideally, we’ll bring someone in to help us through that period to manage that risk in a good way. That's one thing that we need to do, and then it's about finding the balance between what our players need for their development and what the squad needs.

Hopefully in this half of the season we’ll have two players returning from injury in both Leah Williamson and Laura Wienroither, so that's two additions for us which is really good. As you said, we had Noelle leaving permanently and then we have a player like [Kathrine Kuhl] who I think is a phenomenal talent, but hasn't had enough game time to keep on the progression that we see that she has. That's why we want her to go out on loan but not permanently, a season-long loan until the summer with a lot of gametime, and then I'm sure she will continue her development coming back here in a really strong position and taking an important role in our squad going forward. It's those considerations that we have, but apart from bringing in another goalkeeper, I don't think, unless something out of the box presents itself for us, we will be doing any more incoming business. 

on Mary Earps:
I’m not going to comment on any individual goalkeepers in this regard, but ideally for us given our goalkeeping situation, we will be looking for a short-term solution that will span over this international period when the Gold Cup is being played. 

on our current injury list:
Leah is going very well and shouldn't be too far off from returning to play. She's been basically returning to full training here now so that's very pleasing, so she needs a little bit more of that, but after that I think we can introduce her to game minutes as well. Laura Wienroither is a little bit further back and she's still waiting to return to football training, but once that will go she will also start to progress.

We have Kim Little who had a foot injury and we're still managing that one. We will need to see once we get closer to the games on her availability, and then we have Lina Hurtig who has troubles with her back that have been keeping her away from training. That’s something we need to keep monitoring and keep working with, but will take a little bit longer as it stands.

on balancing the FA Cup, Conti Cup and WSL: 
We want to compete in all competitions that we're playing in, so this [game] is really important for us. There is no reason for us not to prioritise these games; sometimes I have ideas about how you could schedule things differently, but with the way that FA Cup games are scheduled, they're always scheduled in a way where you can easily make them a priority. There's no excuse not being able to field your best teams in these competitions, so that's exciting.

on potential incomings and outgoings:
Our preference with [Kathrine] would be to go to Everton on loan for a number of reasons. I think the style of play that they have would suit her in possession and [marry up with] her abilities a lot. I think her number one thing to work and develop would be decision-making, and to do so, you need to be on the ball enough times, and I know she’ll be an important part of what they’re trying to build. Because she’s worked with Everton’s manager before, I think that’s a really strong indicator that he knows her both as a player and a person.

You can never get assurances in football, but this is as close as you can get it. She will get a lot of game time with them, and that’s the preference. Regarding the goalkeeper, Sarah [Bouhaddi], yeah, she would also be a player we prefer getting in, but as with both these things here, we need to wait for when things are finalised. She could be an ideal candidate coming in on a short-term basis, with her experience, leadership qualities and qualities as a goalkeeper as well.

on reviewing the first half of the season:
We look at it two ways, one is that if we look at it from an xG perspective, we’re having the best xG difference in the league, which I think it’s been a very long time since Arsenal have had that. I think you have to go back to the championship-winning season in 2018/19 when Arsenal had the best xG difference in the league, but xG difference doesn’t win you trophies. 
Last year in the league, Manchester City had the best xG difference in the league and they finished fourth. That tells you that they were a very strong team last season, but that in itself doesn’t win you anything.

We can see that we’ve underperformed both in offence and defence; we concede more goals than we should, and we score less goals than we should as well. Part of that has been to say that we create a lot of chances but not enough high-value chances, especially when we’re playing against low blocks. When we’re playing against teams that open up games a little bit more, if we take Leicester as an example, we don’t have any problems creating high-value chances either and they will also score six goals, a sort of a result like that.

We’ve been a very good and effective team when the pitch has been opening up for us, but we’re the team that has spent the most time against the low block in the whole league, and when we do that, we don’t create enough high-value chances. We create a lot of chances, but of lesser value, and we need to work on that. I think that’s a really important part if we’re looking at the Arsenal way of playing, that we should be better at creating chances against low blocks from more ways like set-pieces or crossing situations, and meaning that we’ll need to improve our way to attack with combination play, attack with playing on the third player, and that part both we, the coaching staff, and the players acknowledge that.

We need to keep improving that, not only saying it’s efficiency in the final third, that’s one part of it, improving our finishing. But another part is to be able to, with the way we play attacking football, to break down a low block and create more high-value chances. We work hard on that to keep developing.

on allowing our on-loan youth players to play against us this weekend:
No, it wasn’t [an easy decision to make]. I think it’s two mindsets going against each other. One, it’s a competitive game and my first thought when it’s a competitive game is you should do everything in your power to get every inch on your side to do that, because otherwise you wouldn’t respect the opposition for it. I think that would be the worst mistake you can ever do, going into a competitive game. Then comes the other part, saying that these are three players that I believe can be first-team players for Arsenal Women in the future. The sole reason we have them on loan at Watford is to get first-team experience.

If I then look at it from their perspective, to be able to play in an FA Cup [match] at a sold-out Boreham Wood, that’s probably as good of an experience as it can be and if I denied them that experience, do I also deny them their potential development? If I start thinking about those two things short-term or long-term, I said one of the few times in my career, I’m willing to give up a competitive advantage to invest in the future for Arsenal Women. So short-term, I’m not happy about that decision because they’re three really good players that can cause us problems, but long-term, given that I really see the potential in them in being first-team players, I think it’s the right decision because it’s going to develop them the most.

on what Fox’s best qualities are:
We’ve seen that the role of the full-back has been developing for us, and we need full-backs that are very comfortable playing both inside and outside because I think it's very easy to become static in the way that you play if your full-backs can only be wide. I think that puts a lot of limitations on the way that you can position and the way that you can allow your midfielders to move, so for us to try and create as much fluidity as possible in attack, which I think is a really important aspect of the way we want to play football, having full-backs that are able to play both wide and on the inside is a fundamental part of that. I think we have three natural full-backs here now and each one can do that a little bit in their own ways. Steph, Katie and Emily are comfortable doing that so I think that's a very good situation for us.

on our defence being strengthened with the return of injured players:
That is really good. I think sometimes what people underestimate and why we need to work very hard in in the season is there’s a difference between returning to play, and returning to the level that you had before the injury. Those two things don’t necessarily happen at the same time - when an injured player is coming back, you need to invest gametime in her to get that level. That investment is easy to do in pre-season and it's harder to do when it's in competitive games, and I think that's one of the things that I've been very pleased about in the autumn is to see how we integrated players like Beth Mead and started to integrate a player like Vivianne Miedema and investing game minutes into that. 

Of course we’re yielding the return of that later but you don't get it immediately and we will need to do the same thing with Leah Williamson and Laura Wienroither as well. It's very pleasing but we need to make sure that we invest the minutes in them so they go back to the level where they can where they really can contribute to the team, so I think that's sometimes the overlooked aspect of the job - you always think that the worst season is when you when you lose the players to injuries, and sort of it is, but the hangover effect of that is that you then also need to integrate players and invest minutes into them before they will will go back to to the level of play that they had before their injury, which will naturally take time because you've been away for a long time. That's not anything specifically to Arsenal, that's for all players being out with long-term injury.

on what he expects from Watford:
I think they’ve been true to their style of play, they are brave and they're keeping their heads up high. I think they know that with some of the injuries they have had that’s been quite hard on them and they probably could have had a couple of more points in the Championship as well, so I think they keep believing. They knew this was not going to be an easy season from a result perspective in the Championship but I think they go in with a lot of belief into the last half of the season, and I think they can rightfully do so.

on whether he got feedback on Fox from Russo and Wubben-Moy:
Of course I did that. I think it’s a really important part of the way we try to recruit is that we're not only recruiting football players, first and foremost who are recruiting people into our environment. When we see the football qualities we spend time speaking to former teammates, coaches, national team coaches and other people who might have worked with the players to try and get as complete a picture as possible so we know that it's a good person coming into our group. Lotte and Alessia knew a lot about Emily beforehand so of course we spoke to them as well.