‘You can’t play with fear, you have to be brave’

Jonas Eidevall believes his side learnt a valuable lesson in our 4-2 victory over Birmingham on Sunday.

After dominating for more than 70 minutes and leading three goals to the good, we took our foot off the gas and allowed the visitors to strike twice in five minutes, creating a nervy end to a match that should have been out of sight.

Caitlin Foord secured all three points deep into stoppage time after we regained our confidence, but on another day, we could have seen a different ending at Meadow Park.

“We largely played well but lost a little bit of rhythm in the second half,” Jonas Eidevall said. “We conceded goals from strange situations where we can do better, I think for a minute there after the second goal went in that we just wanted the game to end and didn’t want to play anymore.

“That’s not the right way to go about it, you can’t play with a fear of losing, you have to stay with the attacking mindset and be brave and I am happy that we at least got back to that and scored the fourth. That is the big takeaway other than the goals we concede, it was a controlled performance against a Birmingham side who are not easy to beat.

“They are so compact and give away so little, basically the only thing they give away are the sides for you to cross. I think we see that constantly during the season that when they play against teams with good crossing ability and good players in the air they concede. Apart from that, they are solid defensively and hard to break down and we did that really well today.

“If you feel fear and you feel you want to hide from it, not taking risks is a risk. For me it is important that we keep attacking and keep being positive and enjoying the situations we are in. Pressure is a privilege. Of course you are going to be in situations where you feel you have things to lose and it’s so important to know that we can be brave and when things matter, people still want the ball and to create and to run and to score. It is much better to attack and get the next goal than to sit back and to try to defend and just play long. I much prefer we go about it this way and as a takeaway that might be the biggest one today.”