Arsenal Women beat Slavia Praha 5-2 in Prague on Wednesday evening in the Champions League. Tim Stillman spoke to Katie McCabe after the final whistle, exclusively for Arseblog News.
On putting the Chelsea result behind them…
We were all disappointed with the performance, especially in the second half of the Chelsea game and we touched on that on Monday, but it was a quick turnaround for this game, which we were all happy about.
We spoke about things we wanted to improve on on that second half, it’s a learning curve for us but we were happy to turn around and play a Champions League game quickly and now we have another quick turnaround for Charlton on Sunday.
On tonight’s performance…
It was good fun, not a lot of the play came down the left but with Viv scoring four and Kim scoring too, we had a good attacking display. We needed to get back to scoring ways and we know we have goals all over the pitch. We were disappointed to concede two tonight, but we will try to make it more difficult for them to score in the second leg.
On trying to finish the tie in the first leg…
In the Champions League you never quite know what you’re going to get, the European teams are always difficult. Slavia have great strengths, so it was about us eliminating them and then imposing our own game on them. We were keen to score as many goals as possible and we’ve put ourselves in a good position for the second leg now.
Time to hear from our four-goal hero…
Take it away, @VivianneMiedema ? pic.twitter.com/Tmy7W3i5Uc
— Arsenal Women (@ArsenalWFC) October 16, 2019
On conceding two late goals….
We made some subs at the end and we’ve got players coming back from injury who needed to play 90 minutes, maybe that was a factor in us tiring a little. We maybe lost our formation a little bit and that’s something we can look at and build on for the next game.
On Vivianne Miedema scoring four goals…
You see her quality in her first goal when she breaks through the centre of the pitch and when she goes one on one you just know she’s gonna score. Not a lot of players can score four goals in a Champions League game, it gives us so much confidence to have her leading the line for us.
On playing at left-back...
Me and Lisa were joking about the full-back union with Hector Bellerin and Kieran Tierney, so it’s not bad for us! I enjoy playing there, we are very attacking so I am basically playing wing-back It’s different but something I’m enjoying a lot.
Onto Charlton on sunday COYG
Excellent result and looking forward to seeing highlights of this match. Team is back on the front foot.
Well done team. The perfect response to Sunday’s disappointment?