Our Gunners capped off a hugely successful block of fixtures with a win over Juventus, which booked our place in the UEFA Women's Champions League quarter-finals.
Interim head coach Renee Slegers shared her thoughts on tonight's victory and the team's collective success this month.
Here is everything she had to say:
on how pleased she is by the result...
Yeah, I’m very happy with the result, very happy for the club and the players.
on how different this was from last week's tie against Juventus...
It was very much different. They went high in an aggressive press, player for player in Italy and today, they came out in a mid-block and zonal, and tried to close down spaces for us, which they did really well. It was a puzzle for us to try to figure out how we were going to break that down. We found some solutions in the second half, so we created a little more space and better areas to cross from, and then we had the players coming for us to make the difference today again.
on staying patient and finding that all-important goal...
Yeah, I think so! It’s a combination; you have to be opportunistic as well, we needed to be optimistic, we really wanted to win today, but we felt that the way we were playing, in our structure and the type of game we were playing, we felt like we were going to create; we were sticking with what we were doing and just trying to be a little bit more optimistic.
on what she thinks the team has done best during this successful block...
It was just a very impressive block of the team. We conceded only one goal during this whole block, so defensively very solid. The players have been stepping up big time, they’ve been owning this; we tried to relay it back to them all the time, so giving them the ownership. I’m just very happy with how the block has been, different challenges along the way, so all games have asked something different from us. We’ve responded to that really well, sticking to our identity, but also playing the game that’s ahead of us.
on the upcoming international break...
Obviously, I hope they’re all going to have a good time with their national teams and perform well. They get a couple of days off now, which they deserve, and when they’re back, we’ll keep on going.
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