After an emphatic 5-0 win over Juventus Women at Meadow Park on Sunday, Joe Montemurro’s side travel to France for the Toulouse International Ladies Cup where they will face Europe’s elite.
But while winning our fixtures against Montpellier and Paris Saint-Germain would certainly inspire confidence within the squad, it’s clear that Montemurro’s sole focus is on the season ahead.
“It’s all a work in progress and we’re going away to finalise this large block of pre-season,” he told Arsenal.com.
“We now have players who need to play two 90 minutes and that’s why I didn’t have a large squad for Juventus, as I knew we were only going to make two changes and that was it. We will do the same against Montpellier and PSG.
“We will be playing against top teams and PSG and Montpellier are two of the best teams in the world. Juventus are also one of the best teams in the world and if we really, really want to be the best, we have to play against the best. It’s as simple as that.
“But we will look at the GPS and look at the minutes and there will be a little bit of a change. We have a couple of players who haven’t had any minutes, who are going to get a lot of minutes in Toulouse. Jessica Samuelsson and Jordan Nobbs will come back into the side so we’re in a good position.
“I want to see them implementing what we need from the perspective of conditioning for the football that we play,” Montemurro added. “We want to control the game, control it consistently and have the ball for copious amounts of time, and hopefully we showcased a little bit of that against Juventus.”
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