Arsenal Women drew 0-0 with Brighton & Hove Albion at Crawley Town FC on Sunday afternoon in the group stages of the Conti Cup. The subsequent 4-3 penalty shootout defeat means they only take 1 point from the encounter in a disappointing afternoon for Joe Montemurro’s Gunners side. Tim Stillman caught up with Louise Quinn post-match, exclusively for Arseblog News.
On a disappointing result and performance…
We didn’t do ourselves justice today, but I think you have to give Brighton credit for the way they setup. Ultimately we have to look at ourselves and be better at staying patient and trying to play our own game and we know we weren’t quite ourselves today and we’re very disappointed because we wanted to try and wrap up this group and seal our place in the quarter-finals. Our real goal is to be consistent with our performances and we’re disappointed with today. We’ve got to pick ourselves up and this will be a good game for us to watch again and learn from.
On lacking fluency without Vivianne Miedema and Danielle van de Donk in the starting line-up…
They are very important but I think we showed in the Champions League game that we have the squad to be able to rotate. Maybe we have to look at ourselves and wonder whether we should have come into this game with a bit more energy, things didn’t quite fall for us today and we can’t let that get to us because all of these teams are very tough now. It’s a squad game and we’ve got quality players all around, we can’t just look at the fact that Viv or DvD was on the pitch, we just didn’t perform well enough.
On Joe Montemurro’s half-time team-talk…
He just told us to keep playing our game and do what we do and I think we started the second half pretty well and we were pinning them back and getting through them. But then we let them back into the game and a lot of that starts from the back line, we needed to be tidier and we were letting them in too easily sometimes and that can have an effect on the rest of the team sometimes. We know we’re better than that but you have to hand it to Brighton, they fought very hard and they were getting clearances off the line and their goalkeeper made some good saves too.
Our perfect start in the #ContiCup comes to an end… #WeAreTheArsenal ? pic.twitter.com/ntxa9HZ4ne
— Arsenal Women (@ArsenalWFC) November 3, 2019
On handling Brighton striker Ini-Amasi Umotong…
She’s a real handful because she plays on both sides and runs the channels. She wants to come inside and join play, she wants to win flick-ons and she wants to run in behind too. She’s very powerful and when we played Brighton at home last season she gave us real problems. We knew we had to keep an eye on her.
On playing less this season after the signing of Jen Beattie…
I want to play every game just like every other player, but Beats is class, we all know that. She’s a great teammate too and for the centre backs, we have to be able to come in and rotate too because we have more games this season. It wasn’t ideal that I got injured in a game I was supposed to start at London City Lionesses, but that’s football. This is just part of life at a top club and it’s great to have that level of competition, that’s what we want here.
Just like the male team against Liverpool. For once, our women team did not outperform the male team, not desired thing but breaks routine.
Very honest assessment Louise. Umotong is indeed a handful. When I saw her at Meadow Park last season I thought she would be a good acquisition for us ( not necessarily plan A but a good plan B!).
Mmm. not sure she suits Joe’s style combination of patience and trickery. More suited to Pedro’s style of football I think.
Looks teachable and could offer something slightly different if, as on Sunday, the normal plan A football wasn’t quite clicking.