‘I take nothing away… my players were mammoth’

We fought right until the final minute, but it was not enough to overcome a powerful Chelsea side in Saturday’s SSE Women’s FA Cup final.

Joe Montemurro was honest and open in his post-match press conference. This is what he had to say:

on his emotions at the full time whistle…

Obviously I’m disappointed but let’s speak truthfully, they’re a powerful team and a good team and they’ve got players that can unlock games. The big-game players play on the big stages and they did that.

on where he felt the game was lost…

Probably a couple of things. Structurally we probably didn’t set the line up high enough and they were able to come through. I think there was an error for the first goal and they’ve got in behind, and I think the second one also in midfield. There were a couple of structural things but again I don’t want to take away from them and what they did, or their ability to break down teams with the power they’ve got.

on reaching two finals in his first season…

I’m very proud. I suppose the other people will judge whether it’s good or bad or whatever it is, but we’ve come a long way in the 20 weeks that I’ve been here. We’re starting to find a little bit of rhythm and we’re starting to find a little bit of base that is synonyms with Arsenal. We still need to do a lot of work and maybe the amount of games over the last 10 to 15 days has taken its toll, but I take away nothing from my players, they were mammoth. 

on the frustration of conceding just two minutes after scoring…

Look, it’s the lifelong story of football. You get back into it then you get stretched and opened and then they take their chances. They had some good chances and as I said, they opened us up and scored some good goals.

on what he learnt from the performance…

Obviously we still think that there’s some work to do. There’s some work to do structurally and as a collective and the more we play these big games and these big teams the more we will learn and the more we’ll become better. We just need to be a little more patient and smarter in build up and obviously we need to be a little braver in the way we set up in our defensive organisation in pressing teams high of this nature.