‘We know a lot about her, but she knows a lot about us’ Eidevall on Miedema reunion

Arsenal kick off their WSL season with a home game against Manchester City at Emirates Stadium on Sunday. The game immediately brings Arsenal face-to-face with Vivianne Miedema, whose contract expired with Arsenal during the summer. The Dutch forward joined Manchester City and will line up against her former club on Sunday.

Arsenal boss Jonas Eidevall says there are no hard feelings between him, the club or the player. ‘Viv has such a great history in the club, we wish her the best, I wish her the best. I truly hope that she has a really successful season, she deserves that. One of the big problems for us with letting her go is that she plays for one of our competitors. We know that she is a very strong opponent, we need to focus on our part during the game.’

Asked whether Arsenal have an advantage by knowing the player well, Eidevall was unconvinced. ‘In football, there are not many secrets when you see City play or you see us play, you get what you see. City is very distinct in the way they play, they have a clear game model and they are very good at executing that. It comes to individual players too, it’s not so much knowing what they are going to do because that is not a secret. It is about being good enough in the moment to stop that.

‘With Viv, it works both ways, yes we know a lot about her but she knows a lot about us, it is going to be about who applies that knowledge the best. They have a lot of attacking talent on the pitch, so do we. They will have 11 players on the pitch, so will we. We play against City a lot and we know it is hard to get control of these games. We know that is important on the ball and off the ball, then it comes down to who has the real quality in those moments.’

Asked by Jamie Spanghar, of the Halfway Line and our new Arsenal Women Arsecast shows debuting this season, about whether Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat to Hacken on Wednesday illustrated continued struggles against low defensive blocks, Eidevall admitted it was a step back.

‘If we take the Hacken game, the front five had played 0 minutes together, so in every game we find out things about each other. About movement, about how we can co-operate, what preferences players have and how we get the best out of that but we need to learn quickly. It comes back to the question earlier about progress, this season our end product cannot just be ‘progress’, but our daily mindset has to be about progress, we have to be curious, learn, get better every day and find out all the small things to make things tick better. It is work in motion.

‘It would be easy if progress is linear, I think Hacken was a step backwards for us when the game looked like that. That is what I meant when I said before we know what we did in that game and we very much know what we need to do better. It was a step backwards but sometimes you take a step backwards so that you can race forwards.’

Meanwhile, Gunners defender Amanda Ilestedt confirmed the birth of her daughter Mila on August 30 on her Instagram page. Eidevall says the player will return but only when she feels ready to do so.

‘We are so happy from Amanda and Rainer, her partner and their very cute little baby Mila. Right now, they need to stay together as a family. Of course there is a plan to return to play, Amanda wants to return to play but we need to be guided about what she is feeling and when she is ready to return to the UK and start training, then we will be ready to welcome her.’