Arsenal were 2-0 winners over Liverpool in the WSL at Prenton Park on Sunday thanks to second half goals from Vivianne Miedema and Caitlin Foord. Jonas Eidevall spoke to the press post match. The first two questions are from Arseblog News.
On Miedema’s second half opener and how it related to his half time teamtalk…
I’d like to say that it was! Indirectly maybe. At half time we spoke about possession, they were really aggressive pressing so it was really important for us to do three things. One to have players in front of their midfield because that stretched their midfield going forward. Another one was to have runs where we have players facing forward and we lacked that, we showed an example of that with the first goal. We have players in front of their defending line where Viv picks up the ball and we spoke about being assertive in those moments.
We had a couple of times in the first half where we ended up in really good positions facing forward, but we were starting to look for ‘what are we going to do now? Are we going to do another pass?’ Instead we decided once we have put together that many passes, we needed a really clear decision and to trust that decision. There were some elements into the goal. In the first half, in total I am happy with it, we play well, with good structure and there were small details missing. This game was always going to be a hard game until we got that first goal, once we did that we knew it would open up. Then am a little bit critical because we should have scored a third goal as well. But you can’t get everything.
On Foord scoring three in three…
Sometimes it is the case that it starts going in for you. I think what you can see that was really important in our forwards positioning is that they get in front of goal and don’t keep hanging out wide. I think you see that with her goal against Everton and the goal today. She is a wide forward but she gets into really central positions to finish off attacks and in that part, she has worked hard.
On Miedema scoring her first goal since her return…
I try to stress that there is a difference between returning to play and then you are physically ready. But then there are a lot of other factors that go into performance, your self-confidence, your timing, your technical execution and your explosiveness. Those things usually take time to build and that varies individually. I think what you see now with both Beth and Viv how that has improved over time. I think you see when you follow Viv’s performances have gone from strong to stronger this month and given that, it was only a matter of time before that first goal came. It came at a really good time today! I am pleased for her and seeing her positive development that is important both for her and the team.
On Emily Fox’s performance…
Superb. She plays with a lot of self confidence and assertiveness, you can see a lot of the qualities we rated in her so highly when we looked at full-backs. Her versatility and her ability to handle one v one situations. But also really good passing and combination play. She offers a lot of things that fits very well to an Arsenal player.
On Leah Williamson not getting on the pitch today…
You always have a plan, Leah was available to play today but not for many minutes. Sometimes that opportunity comes and sometimes, today, I felt we needed other things to manage the game. It’s not going to be in reserve, we don’t need to push. Now she has the opportunity for a great training week ahead of her and competing for minutes against West Ham.
On having Williamson as part of the match day squad again…
It’s incredible, i said to the squad afterwards what a privilege it is to work with a squad of this quality. To see the players we start and the quality they have and see the players we bring on and even the players that don’t come on and how much quality I know they have. They, at this moment, probably don’t feel that it’s amazing per se that they don’t come in but it puts us in a strong position if we want to compete in all competitions. I think we have been slow starters after the winter break so we tried to change, we went to Portugal and we played a friendly game and I think we manage this winter break the best of the three seasons I have been here and we need to continue.
On winning on his 100th game in charge…
It is never about me it is about the team. It is irrelevant, we focus on the next game.
On the challenge Liverpool pose…
Tactically they are very clever and physically they are very strong they have many different threats, they have extreme speed in Shanice van de Sanden, they have extreme target abilities with a player like Haug, they are well organised and aggressive team that wants to work extremely hard. Especially here, i think they can cause any team problems. If you go back to the first game of the season we can see that it is a very different Arsenal team than it was at the beginning of the season and that shows the development and growth we have had.
1.Zinsberger; 2.Fox, 28.Ilestedt, 3.Wubben-Moy, 15.McCabe(c) (7.Catley ‘71); 21.Pelova (12.Maanum ‘85), 13.Walti; 9.Mead (24.Lacasse ‘85), 11.Miedema (10.Little ‘71), 19.Foord; 23.Russo (25.Blackstenius ‘71).
Unused: 6.Williamson, 14.D’Angelo, 27.Codina, 32.Cooney-Cross.
Good result and happy to get McCabe’s suspension out of the way. We will need he for all the big games after West Ham.
Great win!! Though I was a bit annoyed that we didn’t score from those excellent chances when Stina came on. I was already getting upset that Emily Fox never shoots at goal each time she found herself in very good positions to do so until she executed that marvelous footwork to go pass 2 Liverpool players and made the assist for Viv’s goal. I was wowed!! Onto the next game. #COYG
Based on that display Emily Fox is going to be a megastar at Arsenal. Don’t be too hard on her she’s only been here a few weeks!
They way she drifts all over…. she is pretty special.
Reminded me of Zinchenko
And she is really tough to beat 1 v 1
I look forward to seeing many more frustrated left wingers.
I won’t be and I never intended to😊!!
Again, Russo looks very comfy playing deep like in the second half, maybe instead in trying crosses to the box from the wingers, they have to play and set strategy in 442 formation and attack more in the interior channels.
Genuinely thought this was going to be 2 points dropped, it looked liked Liverpool had our number. There was talk of the pitch being dry, Walti at times looked like her shoelaces were tied together. Still concern at not getting our main striker (Russo) in more goal scoring opportunities, Eidevall has mentioned this before I’m sure.
Maybe I need to watch again, but I thought Walti was exceptional.
Lessie Russo works her socks off often away from the box; as long as she frustrates her opponents and can create slide rule passes like she did for Foord surely she’s earning her place in the team, albeit not for a full ninety minutes.
Earning her place? She’s supposed to be the superstar scorer who’s better at CF than Miedema and Stina, no? Just more of Eidevall’s “we just need one more star player” game. We’ve got at least 13, maybe 14 players are on this squad who start for their national teams.
We should all realize that this is an all-star roster. Our talent gap over a club like Liverpool–and most everyone else in the league—is huge. There are, by my count, 13 players on the team who are starters for their national teams, and good national teams–England, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia—plus Ireland, Scotland and Switzerland. What other club in all of women’s football can make that claim?
Why come on here and post your always negative comments knowing most here are positive and supportive? There has to be some psychological term for your “reward” but I can’t figure it out.
We win…you trash JA.
We lose…you trash JA.
I assume that since you are on this site that you are an Arsenal fan, so why do you trash JA and all the women all the time.
Never positive…
WTF dude ?
I used to try and reason with that poster but I gave up long ago! Save your breath, mate, and communicate with others that want to discuss the team’s performances at a rational level!
The quality we now have in the WSL is fantastic. It’s not just Arsenal who are packed with internationals. I’m thinking (with some trepidation!) of facing front threes of Kelly-Shaw-Hemp and Kaneryd-James-Reiten.
Indeed, some people think that we should still be beating middle order teams by 5 or 6 goals every week but the truth of the matter is even the club proping up the table is a professional outfit and no more a walkover. Ok they may not have the budget or the facilities of the top few clubs but mugs they ain’t and any of them are quite capable of springing a surprise from time to time. The glory days of Vic Akers and Arsenal winning everything are over not because our coach or our players are any worse than… Read more »
Just read your post again and to think 2 of those 6 were Arsenal youngsters who, for whatever reason, we “let go”!
We should have scouted Lauren Hemp too. She grew up closer to Hertfordshire than Manchester! 🙂