Arsenal were 3-1 winners over Aston Villa in the WSL on Sunday evening, after trailing to an Ebony Salmon goal, second half strikes from Victoria Pelova, Lotte Wubben-Moy and Stina Blackstenius gave Arsenal the points. Jonas Eidevall spoke to the press post-match, the first four questions are from Arseblog News.
On what changed at half-time…
Me and the assistant coaches took some time before we went into the dressing room at half-time. The first half was not a bad performance, it is a bad result. It was a result that goes against the state of play, we had control even if we didn’t create so many chances. We were unlucky to go 1-0 down. We changed two things. Villa were really, really compact in their organisation in their 532. It was really important to attack on one side with a structure and start dragging their 10s out on that side and then, with speed and determination, go over on the other side. That was where we would open them up.
Once we got that clarity in the second half, we dragged them out and changed the point of attack and started to create some really clear chances. The other thing we spoke about was that Villa really wanted to play out from the back. When you win the ball in those moments against a low block, we needed to be much more forward oriented when you win the ball in these pressing situations and try to create from that. We did that really well in the second half as well. At times when you are 1-0 down, you want to try to put over so much information but I think experience told me and the team, in these situations, it’s important to get the details right that we really need to focus on what is going to make a difference.
We said let’s not review what happened in the first half, let’s look into the future and paint a picture of what is going to be for us to be successful. I think we did that well, big credit to the players because they problem solved, they were solution oriented, cool under pressure in the second half. We were so methodical and we kept on believing if we didn’t convert, we would create more chances. That was a really high performing team in a pressure situation.
On whether they wanted to target Villa playing out from the back…
It was one of the two details we spoke about. Especially when we win the ball, how we could play the ball forward quickly in those situations to create high value chances in those pressing situations.
On whether he thought it would be one of those days when chances kept going begging in the second half…
No, I make a conscious choice to think ‘on the next chance, we will score.’ A conscious choice I make to stay optimistic, if it is 1-1 in the 92nd minute, I make a conscious choice to believe we will win the game and believe 100% in that. I want the players and the rest of the staff to believe the same way. I don’t think you should accept any other way of thinking in those moments. That can be hard in those moments because your mind might go into that, to say, ‘it’s one of those days.’ You don’t let the mind go. Always stay positive, positive reinforcement because that maximises the chances of winning.
On Lia Walti’s injury and Stina Blackstenius going off with the physios at the end…
On Stina I have no idea, I have no medical information. With Lia Walti, she suffered a minor knee injury in training this week so she will be out for several weeks. What several weeks means in relation to the season, I don’t know yet. We need to let this go a couple of weeks then we will have a much better picture and we can see if she will be available for the last games of the season. But it is a minor knee injury and that is important to say.
On whether Arsenal are still in the title race…
We focus on our games and play one game at a time, we are going to do our very best in every game. At the moment, we look forward to a cup final at the weekend but the league we want to get the highest possible position if we focus on our games.
On preparing for the Conti Cup Final…
We are really excited and we have great memories from the final last year, it was a great moment winning silverware with Arsenal. We want that for every competition we enter and we are at the final stage now and it is a great opportunity to win again and be back to back champions. We want to make the most out of that. We were disappointed last week was not only the result, but even more s the display because we were not the team we want to be and that hurts. We have some things there to rectify. We learned things from that game and so did Chelsea. They get players returning, we get players returning, it is going to be a different game. Now we get a full week to prepare for that and we bring everything for the final.
On the importance of qualifying for the Champions League next season…
Very important. We want to be a European club, we want to be a champions League club. In my first two seasons we had good runs in Europe, especially last season and we all loved that experience so much and want that again. That is also why it is important to do the maximum in the league because the higher we finish in the league, the easier the way into the group stages of the Champions League becomes as well. Everything matters. We have five games left in the league and we need to do our very, very best in all five of those games and we will see where we finish.
1.Zinsberger; 2.Fox, 6.Williamson, 3.Wubben-Moy, 15.McCabe (7.Catley ‘65); 21.Pelova (32.Cooney-Cross ‘81), 10.Little(c); 9.Mead, 12.Maanum (25.Blackstenius ‘71), 24.Lacasse (19.Foord ‘64); 23.Russo
Unused: 14.D’Angelo, 26.Wienroither, 27.Codina, 40.Williams, 62.Reid.
Great win but the backwards and sideways play in front of the opposition 18 yard box reminds me of the men’s team in 2019/20, no penetrative passes even when 2 or 3 players have made the run. Jonas also needs to be wary of the high line we were caught out twice with the game at 1-1 that had it been arsenal would have been goals
After the hopeless display against Chelsea in the last game you would be hoping for a positive reaction, prove the doubters wrong show that this team are capable of going deep into the season on all fronts. What do you serve up – one of the most turgid and pedestrian halves of football to go with the many others put out this season. Painful to watch and probably just as painful to play in as well, just what was Jonas asking this team to do. What were Jonas and his team of fairly well paid analysts cooking up all week… Read more »
You are taking the review quote out of context, it was in particular reference to the half time talk. His decision was to focus on how to improve / change things. It worked very successfully but you seem to gloss over that.
Yes exactly this, they will review the first half and the shot of Eidevall, his assistants and the head analyst looking at the laptop at half-time says they reviewed it (unless they were watching cat videos on YouTube). They decided to prioritise how to improve rather than pouring over what wasn’t right and when you produce 25 shots in the second half, difficult to argue with that really (even if it is reasonable to have misgivings about the first half). I watched the game back and the first half actually wasn’t as bad as I thought, they just played into… Read more »
Spot On, Tim – so many near misses. Top performance!
I don’t think Eidevall is capable of leading this team. The hierarchy needs to make the hard decision to terminate the contract (even if they stupidly gave him an extension). The team is worse than the individual players and that is the responsibility of the manager.
That was really a 2-1 match. The last goal shouldn’t have counted. Terrible officiating.
We should be winning that much more than 2-1.
Arsenal had 37 shots to Villa’s 1. The XG was 4.0 to 0.2. It was not a 2-1 match.
No disagreement there. Arsenal should be winning these matches by a lot more. But the reality is that absent a goal that shouldn’t have counted, the actual scoreline was 2-1, and Villa could have tied it with another fluke goal.
Pretty good victory in the end but my word did we make it unnecessarily hard on ourselves. First half was everything wrong with us this season. All the possession, zero cutting edge. Incredibly tepid response to the Chelsea game. First 5 to 10mins were good and it just went downhill from there. Again, conceding with the first shot on target is symptomatic of a really worrying defence. Came back in the second half and were absolutely brilliant. Battered Villa so much and the goals were almost inevitable. But we almost made it hard for ourselves with our finishing. Unreal profligacy… Read more »
In my opinion, I wasn’t upset with Stina, how would she know if there was someone by her side? acted as scorer 9 has to act, the blame has to fall on the referee, Stina Blackstenius did his job inside the area
I loved this from Stina. Firstly, she played to the whistle. Secondly, she didn’t handle the ball intentionally, she just fell over and then got straight up. And thirdly (most importantly), she scored!
A proper striker’s goal. Keep going until the ref tells you otherwise! She wasn’t to know she was going to fall over so did not even consider crossing it but the reaction to hitting the deck was sublime and it is +1 on the goal difference. Should have been +2 really; sorry Manu but you should have saved Ebony Salmon’s effort it barely trickled along the ground. I suppose we should be thankful that at least she tried to stop it and didn’t just stand still and watch it roll into the net!
Stina ia very intelligent, she thinks quickly and Russo, my god, she’s starting to loosen UP too, i Hope she does what she missed in this game against Chelsea next week, Stina & Russo work better together
Did Stina hit her head when she fell? She looked quite shaken when they were all celebrating.
No I think she was just sure it was going to be disallowed for offside and handball so stood there looking guilty until Beth jumped on her!
Very similar goal to the one we conceded v Liverpool on the opening day. Too easy for runners to find space between full-back and centre-half. Leicester scored against us that way too.
Seems that’s a “thumbs up” from Mr Nobody 🙂
They did it eventually and made a case for Russo and Stina starting together. Not mentioned in any comment but I thought Russo had a very good game, her hard working self with two assists. Fox was also very useful on the right.
On the minus side I am a McCabe doubter and thought she was substituted having had a bad time on the pitch but at least, for once, she never got booked!
Surprised they left it to half time to bring about the tactical changes. Emma Byrne on commentary clearly identified the way to beat the block quite early on. Thankfully we got there in the end but it feels much more laboured than it should be.
When I watch a match already knowing what the score is, I find I am less critical and less impressed than when I watch live. Yesterday’s match was no exception. The first half wasn’t terrible, though we started better than we finished, which is never good. We were a bit slow, passes not quite on it and the defending was poor for the goal we conceded. But we pressed well and made chances. Couldn’t finish our dinner, but hey. Second half was clearly better but the two halves were not chalk and cheese in my opinion. Pelova started showing signs… Read more »
With that second-hand performance you wonder why we didn’t score five or more. One of the commentators (the excellent Emma Byrne?) used the word “urgent” and that was the difference. It showed what we are capable of. For their goal, I’m still concerned that Lotte and Leah are not always on the same wavelength. This time Lotte stayed too central and they ended up too close to each other, creating undefended space elsewhere. Against Chelsea, they sometimes left too much space between them. They haven’t played together for a long time and they haven’t developed that instinctive understanding of how… Read more »
Second-half, not second-hand!