Arsenal Women scrapped their way to a hard fought 3-1 win over 3rd place Birmingham City in the WSL today, with two second half goals from Jordan Nobbs and a Danielle van de Donk penalty maintaining the girls’ 100% start after 7 WSL games. Tim Stillman caught up with Danielle ‘DvD’ van de Donk after the game, exclusively for Arseblog News.
On whether this was the toughest game of the season so far…..
Yes, definitely. They are very tidy and their defence is always right, we struggled a lot in midfield when they were attacking and we had the defend them. Every time they just seemed to have an extra player.
In the second half, we linked up a bit better everywhere. We did better in the midfield and had a bit more possession, which is what we want. That improvement in the second half is what got us the win in the end.
On Joe Montemurro’s half time team talk…
Basically he just got angry! But you need that sometimes and we needed that today, they were quicker than us in the first half and we weren’t there with the tackles. We’re not used to that at all so we had to step up our game a bit more and that’s all he said.
Heading into the international break like… ?#WeAreTheArsenal ? pic.twitter.com/YchVgsIvFz
— Arsenal Women (@ArsenalWFC) November 4, 2018
On conceding an equaliser seconds after going 1-0 up…
Yeah, that shouldn’t happen, it wasn’t professional of us at all so that’s very bad from our side and we knew that straight away. Mentally, it was pretty shit, but we know we can bounce back, we know we have the players and the quality to hurt teams and that helps [psychogically]. We just had to get straight back into our rhythm and that’s what we did.
On her penalty conversion to make it 2-1….
My only thought was ‘I’m going to score it.’ It goes back to when I was little and my mum used to say to me, ‘if you’re in front of goal, just think to yourself ‘I’m going to hit the ball into the goal’ and don’t think about anything else!’ That’s stayed with me, that’s always what I try and do in front of goal.
WE'RE BACK IN FRONT! ?@DanielleDonk from the penalty spot ?#WeAreTheArsenal
? 2-1 ? (67) pic.twitter.com/KSPbRsm3KP
— Arsenal Women (@ArsenalWFC) November 4, 2018
On winning a different way….
This was a really good test for us, some parts of some games have been too easy at times this season and I’m glad Birmingham really tested us like this. We learn more from these kind of games than we do when we win by a lot of goals. So I’m really happy they gave us such a hard game, we know we had to work really, really hard to score more than them.
On Tabea Kemme’s debut after long term injury…..
I don’t really know what she will bring the team yet, she only just started training with us recently! We are really happy she played her first game for Arsenal today and I can’t wait to see more from her. She’s always positive in training, she is very quick and she can play in literally every position, so she will be a great addition for us.
Here's how they stack up in the #FAWSL pic.twitter.com/r22LN0FlXu
— The FA Women's Super League (@FAWSL) November 4, 2018
I don’t want to jinx it, but this might just be the greatest women’s football side assembled if we put it into context. We are I a very different league to the one where we ran through the league every year, but a more competitive league with lot’s of international stars amongst the team’s. We just need to add a few more players for depth and then we will be primed for greatness.
COYG.
DVD is also my favourite player in the side too.
She’s improved enormously. I’ll be honest, there were times at the beginning of last season where I thought, ‘what does she actually do?’ But she’s come on in leaps and bounds.
Yeah, I was wondering the same because I thought she was a pure attacking midfielder, but she has so much more in her locker. Not the paciest player but a player who plays what’s in front of her, and then springs out of nowhere with a goal.
I am loving the confidence in the team too.
Wait till Danielle Carter is fully fit and back playing again; we’ll even have a more potent strike force!
She said shit?????
How dare u mention spurds in ur conversation
Tough old game that, well done to the team for finding a way to get the win. (And keeping their cool – at one point in the 2nd half I was wondering if DVD was going to chin someone.) Man City are looking pretty formidable, so (another) really important three points to keep the gap intact.
DvD is almost the most likely to chin someone!
*always
Thanks, Tim. Superb result. So happy to see that we can scrap our way to victory. Birmingham were outstanding, we were below par at first, too slow to react to second balls, nothing was coming off in attack and we couldn’t deal with their press. But I felt that from about 20-25 minutes in, we had started to come to terms with the calibre of the opposition and what sort of game it was. There was a moment about half an hour in when Lia Waelti just kept the ball under pressure from three Birmingham City players and popped off… Read more »
For my mind Nobbs is the best English player in the league and it’s then a question of if Bronze or Duggan are better right now. She’s having a brilliant season and credit to the club.
“mentally it was a bit shit”
Love it.
Not to be disregarding of Pedro Losa but I think beyond the new players who have come in, Montemurro has also been a massive factor in how strong the women have been this season. At some point during the men’s team barren times, I usually took solace in the women at least winning something. This feels like those times again.
Indeed, Pedro is a lovely guy and potentially a really good coach, but he had this infuriating tendency to over complicate. Arsenal have had a squad capable of winning the league every year since we last won it, but Joe has really brought that out. The quality was always there.