This season, Arsenal Women’s squad has grown in size by some distance. They have 26 senior players and Brazilian winger Gio, could not be registered for the squad. It’s in contrast to last season when the Gunners’ small squad was torn apart by injuries after Christmas.
Eidevall admits that it takes time for familiarity and partnerships to grow in a bigger squad but insists it is ‘the only way’ Arsenal can compete on all fronts.
‘It goes back to that proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far go together,’ he tells Arseblog News. ‘There is no doubt that the way forward is to go with a larger squad, otherwise you are not going to be able to handle all the competitions and the challenges that poses.
‘Then comes the question of ‘how fast can you go now when you try to implement things but you don’t only worry about 11 players that will play together week in week out?’ Of course you go faster if you have that but it’s a lot more vulnerable when those players can’t play.
‘The solution is to implement ideas in a whole squad so everyone gets that sense of familiarity so everybody can step in with their roles and responsibilities. But it’s a slower process, it has to be, the time is divided out to more people and you need to have more trust and patience in the process and you have to try and make the most of every second that you work, but it is slower.
‘As long as you use every second as well as possible then it is going to work, I am 100% sure this is the right way to go to go with a larger and more competitive squad. It is the only way we can get to the point of challenging in all the competitions we want to.’
Eidevall says having a bigger squad leads to competition among players and drives standards, as well as giving opponents different problems to deal with. ‘There is a competitive nature in the squad, we have a lot of qualities.
‘I enjoy every opportunity we have to see them in games and in training. We don’t have any permanent team selection at Arsenal. We select for each game what we think will be the best team.’
Very true. But somehow, we have to make it work better now because time is not on our side. This is a squad which has long-term planning embedded in it, which is a good thing. And he is trying to change and improve a lot of things at once, which is also to be applauded.
I agree and its a tricky one. I think this article and the other one about our explosion in support belong together because this is the conundrum, maybe – a groundswell in Lioness inspired support just as a rather tactical sort of manager is bedding in his ideas, resulting in stale games in front of huge crowds.
Hopefully to be remedied by a stonking victory agains Chelsea!
Familiarity among girls takes more time. You don’t say those things anymore even in light-hearted manner that I just did. Getting my coat anyways.
It’s true that in general, groups of men ally with each other more naturally or easily than groups of women, hard to say whether this is nature or nurture, though. But togetherness really is not a problem with this squad, from what we hear. Very unified bunch, strong bonds and mutual respect.
Funny thing is my favourite two periods in the games this season are injury time against Villa and the second half vs Leicester when tactics went out of the window and we relied on the raw talent of the players on the pitch. Sometimes I cannot help but believe that Jonas over-thinks situations especially before the game even kicks off which is why we are such slow starters. We then go 1 or 2 down and he says we’re losing anyway go for it and the players respond!
I don’t think tactics went out of the window in either case, quite the opposite. Against Leicester the whole point was they didn’t execute the game plan well enough in the first half but did in the second, it was the first half that saw tactics go out of the window. Against Villa, some good subs were made and bringing Beth and Stina on made a big difference.
Yes, a very good analyst