Arsenal Women boss Jonas Eidevall says making the Emirates ‘a fortress’ for the women’s team is a key aspect of the team’s growth. Arsenal are leading the charge with booming attendances in women’s football in the UK and have steadily increased the number of women’s games at the stadium with a publicly stated ambition to move the women’s team into the stadium on a full-time basis in the future.
The Gunners broke the WSL attendance record with 54,000 in the stadium a fortnight ago to witness a limp 1-0 defeat to Liverpool. Arsenal are hopeful of around 40,000 in the ground on this occasion. It’s the first time Arsenal have hosted back-to-back WSL games at the Emirates as part of their ongoing feasibility study on the women’s team using the stadium on a more regular basis.
“It is such an important part of how we want to grow is to make the Emirates our fortress,” Eidevall explained. “Doing that together with the fans. That is not only going to be achieved by the team, it has to be the team and the fans in co-operation.
“They need to lift and energise each other. It goes both ways and to create that bond, we need to transform what we have at Boreham Wood onto the Emirates. How do we do that? Playing there more often. Creating those situations more often.
“This is a really strong moment, playing back-to-back league games here. If you go back three or four years, playing at the major stadiums was a one-off occasion. It was done around Europe but it was these one game per season things, where a lot of tickets are given away. To try to get maximum attendances.
“But one week after, what happened with the attendances? Where was the next game being played the week after? Very few clubs have managed to do this week-by-week and back-to-back and that is about sustainability with attendance figures and maybe moving permanently into the Emirates, that is what we need to show, as a team and with our fans, that we can get good attendance figures week in week out. That is where we need to go to.
“That is when it can become a real strength for the women’s team. We are on that movement, we are not fully there yet but we are on that movement and that makes me proud and optimistic about the future.”
Morning Gooners!!!
Proud of the support we gave our team on Friday night. We now take this back to the Emirates 🔴⚪️🎶@rednwhite_awfc pic.twitter.com/DkuUpZuNR8— Arsenal Women Supporters Club (@ArsenalWomenSC) October 8, 2023
Eidevall also says he and his team are eager to put things right after a poor performance and result at the Emirates a fortnight ago against Liverpool, “I am happy to go back to the Emirates so quickly after what was a disappointing performance against Liverpool. Let’s show the crowd another version of ourselves. For me the disappointment from the Liverpool game is that we didn’t energise the crowd enough with the way that we played.
“We looked static when we had the ball and we didn’t get them moving enough. We weren’t able to stack situations on top of each other. I don’t think we had more than one or two counterpressing situations.
“When the game becomes more dynamic we are better. We could see that in the second half against Manchester United- when we start moving the opponent, the game starts moving for us. That is really important to get that fluidity. Hopefully we can get that against Aston Villa.”
A must win game for the manager.
The seeming lack focus and intensity at times in the 2nd half while losing to Liverpool frustrated me more than losing. I think if fans feel how important it is to play at the Emirates from the team’s performance they will sell out the big stadium consistently.
If the supporters willing to pay the same amount for the tickets, then let’s do it.