Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall has said that pressure and criticism is all part of playing for a club like Arsenal and that he, his staff and his players need to use that ahead of Saturday’s pivotal WSL clash at home to Chelsea.
The Gunners boss is under fire after a drab 0-0 draw with Everton last weekend and a 5-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League on Wednesday. Eidevall suggested that pressure and criticism are all part and parcel of being at an elite club.
Asked whether he has a response to critics, Eidevall said, ‘It is not for me to talk to critics, because I don’t know really what they are saying. The most pressure comes from myself. I set incredibly high standards on myself and I am going to be by far the fiercest critic of my performances and the team’s performances.
‘Pressure is not only a privilege it is a necessity for high performance and if you want to compete for competitions, you need to be able to handle and deal with pressure and make sure pressure gets the best version out of you. I don’t mind that part of the game, it is part of the privilege of representing this football club.’
Eidevall urged his players to put the disappointment of Wednesday behind them, even though he acknowledges the performance in the latter part of the game was below par. ‘We are obviously really disappointed with how we act in the final 15 or 20 minutes of the game.
‘The last two goals we concede should not happen, we should not look like that. That leaves us with a bitter feeling and it’s a tough learning point but we need to take that to get to where we want to be.
‘We have played a lot of competitive games compared to other clubs and it feels like we have been together for a long time now. It is almost three months since we started pre-season now they have taken away the international break from mid-September.
‘We know that every competition we are in it’s going to be high competition it’s going to be high challenges and if we are going to be successful, we are going to have to have the right focus on every game and we need to put learnings into place quickly to develop as a team.’
Asked whether Saturday was a must win game with Arsenal in 6th place in the WSL, Eidevall said every game is a must win game. ‘Every game ahead of us is a must-win game. That is the mentality we need to have. Nothing else pleases us. We always try to go out to win football matches.’
‘The main objective for us in pre-season was to qualify for the Champions League group stage and we did that. We want to be competing all the way in the league and there is no way you can tell me we are not in a position to do that. We are in a position to do that.
‘We are disappointed with the start to the group stage, our ambition is to go through but there are five games left in the group stage and we need to put our focus on what is in front of us. We still have all possibilities open to us but we need to learn, progress and perform every single time we play.’
The Arsenal manager backed his players to show a strong performance in the Saturday lunchtime clash against Sonia Bompastor’s Chelsea team. ‘Training has been really good today, the players have been really focused and they are determined to put absolutely everything we have on the pitch tomorrow.
‘I have a really good group of players and staff, they are resilient and bounce back from performances we are not happy about. We learn and progress as a team. What is important now is to think about the future, think about what we have ahead of us. We know what we need to do and that is always a good starting point, now it is up to us to do it.
‘After the Everton game I was not happy with the energy or dedication that we played the first half with. We finish the game like we should but if we had started the game with that urgency, I am very confident we would have found the result we wanted. It is not, for me, about ranking our opponents, we need to be at our best every time we have the privilege to represent this fantastic football club.’
For gods sake get this walking talking book of cliches out the club
A good marathon runner doesn’t walk at the beginning every time
Before everyone jumps on this statement: ‘It is not for me to talk to critics, because I don’t know really what they are saying.” Can everyone please just read what Tim has said on twitter about the context of it before having a collective hissy fit? ie that he doesn’t know because he doesn’t (sensibly) read all the stuff in the various media. One of the things I like about Eidevall is that he is always honest about where his team went wrong, if not immediately after the game then in the one following eg above about the last two… Read more »
Well put
Nobody should ever go to twitter, it’s a cesspool.
The perpetual problem is the guy can see what the issues are and yes he does give honest appraisals of the performance post match but, and this is the issue, he does not appear to have any solutions. He jumps around on the touch line but nothing changes. We don’t play quicker or slicker, passes are still misplaced, shots, if we bother to take any, are 5 yards wide, we are so static the only possible pass is backwards or if we are lucky sideways, and opposition runners are not picked up making the defence look inept. Four years down… Read more »
Jonas, you’re on borrowed time. Mate.
Journalists let this guy off the hook. When he said lack of urgency in the first against Everton in the first half, why not a follow up question like: As a coach, why didn’t you do anything about it?
How many more rallying cries are going to be needed this season? How many more times is he going to be disappointed after a bad performance? How many times is he going to say put that disappointment behind us? We’ve heard his biggest critic is himself, no one puts more pressure on him than himself. He’s probably right but it’s a bit of an empty statement as it should be that way and every other coach will the same. That pressure on himself doesn’t seem to generate improvements in the squad, playing style, performances. I read Mr Nobody’s comment on… Read more »
I think they should question Claire and Edu Gaspar, because Jonas will not hand over his resign, he will continue to live in his own Narnia world, these two who selected him for this position. I think it was too early to give a 3-year contract, 1 year would be the right amount to see the team’s evolution. It was like that at United women’s and I think it is at City women’s too.
‘Jonas Eidevall reacts to (insert score here) defeat to Chelsea’. Here, I’ve written the next headline for you.