Interview

‘That was a nice little warning sign for us’

Montemurro

Joe Montemurro’s side recorded their fifth consecutive win of the season on Sunday - but it wasn’t without its scares.

West Ham United took the lead twice inside the first half, before Danielle van de Donk hit a hat-trick to complete the comeback in our tightest win of the season so far.

We spoke to Montemurro after the final whistle - and this is what he said:

on the team’s performance…

We obviously got the result and we never felt that we were going to lose the game. We never felt as if we lost control of the game, it was just a couple of silly errors that allowed them into the game, but all in all it was a nice little warning sign for us and it’s come at a good time in the year where we can use it to make sure that we’re on guard.

on it being our tightest win of the season so far…

Well, we still found a way to win and in the end I felt that we won quite comfortably. But as I said, we’ve just got to tighten up things and make sure that we’re smarter in certain scenarios. We’re going to have teams that are going to come and defend and hit us on the break and all it takes is a mistake or an error and you’re 1-0 down and chasing the game. It will be good learning for us and we need to make sure that we continue to progress and learn playing our football, and understand what we need to do when we play against these sorts of teams.

Arsenal Women - team huddle

on missing some big opportunities…

Kim had a chance and Viv also had a one on one in the second half. If you take away the three one on ones then there were also some chances where we hit the crossbar. We’re talking four or five chances here and you’ve got to really sort of question whether West Ham created any other chances after their first goal. Pauline made a couple of good saves, but she made a couple of errors from her behalf that allowed them into the game, but all in all, we’re still creating chances and we found a way to win.

We showed snippets of our football, which is important, and you’ve probably also got to take into consideration that we’ve played three games in seven days. You’re always going to have those ebbs and flows but I think the reality is that we were very strong and in the second half we were very much in control and a lot more in command. We moved the ball quicker and we certainly played the game out well, so the work that we put in over pre-season is certainly showing. 

on what changed at half-time…

There were some tweaks tactically from the way that we set up in the first half. We definitely tried to find more spaces out wide and we set up a little bit differently, then obviously in the preparation we did a little bit more in the build-up in terms of where we wanted to go. There were some stern words said at half time about the general attitude and our standards, which I think certainly had a bit of an effect in the second half.

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