Renée Slegers will take charge of her first match in three weeks when we return to Barclays Women’s Super League action on Sunday.
London City Lionesses are the hosts at Bromley’s Copperjax Community Stadium and, ahead of the game, our head coach held her pre-match press conference at the Sobha Realty Training Centre.
Here’s everything she had to say on the following subjects…
on if there are any injury issues:
No, no fresh injuries, so that’s really good. Beth has been progressing well during the international break so hopefully if this last day goes well and as planned, she’s available for minutes against London City.
on that being a huge boost:
Yeah, that’s really positive of course, she’s been performing really well for us, (she’s) been an important part of how we play. Of course, you want everyone to be fit the whole season. We had to be without her for a couple of games but the team has done really well and we’re happy that she’s back with us soon.
on if it’s a physical or mental challenge to have so many games coming up:
I think it’s always going to be both, we have a really strong squad, a lot of players ready. If you look at the last block, there’s been a lot of involvement of different players. The players are ready to perform for us and now with Steph, Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross not being with us, we’re going to need everyone. Of course we know that we’re going into five London derbies and then Brighton at the end of the block, we’re active in three different competitions, so there’s of course mental demands, like there always will be, but also physical. We start with these two games and we know how London City has framed the game, it’s a big one for them, so we’ll have to be prepared. Then it’s West Ham and then we have those four games with a very short turnaround, so freshness is going to be key for us this block.
on what she’s made of London City’s first season in the WSL:
At the moment, they’re very stable in the table. You see that’s hard if you come up from the WSL 2 to stabilise and do the right things to be able to do that; I think they’ve done that. Of course, they recruited a lot of experienced players. That’s been their strategy, as it looks like from the outside, to build something stable in the first season in the WSL. I think they’ve done that well. They have quality players and, like I said, a stable position in the table.
on what success looks like for us this season:
Of course we play for trophies. We have one trophy now, the Champions Cup, which we’re very proud of to make history. But we want more. In this block, we’ll be active in three different competitions.
on how Williamson and Kelly are progressing:
We always have to be really smart with when do we push players, when do we taper? How do we do that as a group, as a team? Also, what does every single individual need in the squad? We were happy with our progression of minutes for Chloe in the block before the international break. She got 15 minutes with England. She’s come back with so much energy, very hungry. She’s been training really well. She’s physically and mentally in a really good place. Leah played her first 90 before she went away with England. It was really good to see her play for England as well. There was some really good collaboration with England on how we wanted to keep on progressing her. That’s been really positive, so same for Leah, she’s come back really well.
on if there’s a shift in the team’s mentality for the business end of the season:
You can feel that it’s coming closer. The players love it. We have competitors in our group, we’re in a great place. Before the international break, we didn’t want that block to stop because it was a really positive block for us. The results, obviously, the run of seven wins, but also everything we did as a group in the background to make everything really positive and challenging in a really good way. What we need to do is win every single game when we’re at Arsenal. But of course, there’s excitement in the team of us getting closer to trophies, so we really look forward to this block.
on this game being a sellout for London City:
Well done, of course. You can see they’re proud of their sell-out. I think there’s 5,000 tickets sold. But I also think there’s 1,500 Arsenal fans. One-third of the crowd, almost, will be Arsenal. We’re, of course, really proud and privileged with the fan base that we have. We will hear them and they will feed us. We will do everything to deliver what they want to see. They want to see an Arsenal team together performing well and winning matches so we’re going to do everything we can on Sunday.
on Danielle van de Donk:
Of course, she’s been out with a knee injury for quite a while. But she’s back now. I’m happy for her, of course. You wish for every football player to be fit. It’s good for the women’s game as well to have as many fit players in the game. We have a lot of good players that are active, the standards and the development of football is helped by that. I loved to play with Danielle. We’ve known each other for a very long time. We grew up and we’ve been in that phase of women’s football in the Netherlands together when the semi-professional league started, we started to play at Willem II together. She’s a very fiery player on the pitch. Aggressive, wants to win, but can make use of the dark arts, if you will. She knows how to manage the game and be smart. She’s a lovely person. We come from the same area in the Netherlands, very close to each other, 10-15 minutes away. It will be great to see her. I’m happy she’s back fit.
on the length of the recent international break:
It’s different. It was new to be without the players for so long. We’ve caught up with the players, how it was for them and their experience to be away so long with the national teams. For us as staff, we get more days to review and preview. I think for us the risk is that we have so much time to come up with all these wild ideas and a lot of things that we want to do differently or even better. For us it’s important, we’ve been waiting for it to start again, we want the players to be back, we want to start working again. It’s been very quiet here because all the ideas that we have and everything that we’re working on is just theory at that point in time. We want it to become real and it becomes real when the players are back. That’s been different. We really have to be aware of how a longer period away for the players, with certain players also playing three games this window, most of them two, the travel, being away from home for so long and then having to settle back in, that transition, we have to respect. That’s much different for the players than for us. The mental, physical load has been, especially the mental load and that transition back into our environment where it’s very demanding as well, is something we learned after this. What was good was that the players had a couple of days after the Bristol game. I think two days off most of them to get into camp instead of going straight into a camp, then there was a couple of days after camp and with this type of window, we get a full week to prepare for the first game, which has been positive.
on what specific threats she sees from London City:
I think they’ve changed since the change in management. If you look at the game we played against them at the Emirates first game of the season, we don’t expect the game to be playing out like that on Sunday because they’ve changed tactically. But they might do. But a little bit more positional and maybe zonal in their defence rather than going player for player. That will be different. Then, of course, if you look at the players that are playing for them and how they play them to their strengths, you see that they’ve been really good with fast attacks and doing things on the dribble and counter-attacks. They’ve had tight results against top teams. That’s the way they’ve played those types of games. I think set-pieces is an area for the game as well.
on how Freya Godfrey has got on this season:
I’m really happy to see her progress. I’m in touch with Freya every now and then. When she was selected for England for the first time, for example, I sent her a message. I worked with her when she was on loan in my first year as an assistant coach here at Arsenal. I did reviews with her, so I did do some close work with her. I’m really happy with where she’s at and also proud of her because things aren’t always easy for young players. She’s had a journey with loans, obviously, and different challenges on the way, but she’s been strong. If you look at how she’s playing now, I think you see all her super strengths playing out. She’s fast, she’s a dribbler, she can finish right, left foot. She’s playing really well for them. I think it’s great to see. Of course, it’s always hard decisions with the squad composition. We have four wide forwards that are top class as well. Every player has different pathways and take different roads, but I’m genuinely really happy for Freya that she is where she is in her own development now.
on if there’s a concern about the pathway for academy players to WSL first teams:
I think the game is growing incredibly fast, and in an ideal world, everything grows simultaneously, so everything goes at the same pace. But that’s not the case. So I think it’s important, and we as a club find it really important that we have a close link to the academy and we set up the structure and the conditions and facilities, resources as good as possible to be able to make that happen. We also see that the transition from academy to senior football is a very important one. So when you then get to a stage where you’re ready to start sniffing or start transitioning into, what structure do we have in place to be able to make those steps? So that’s really important. I think at the moment, we see that there’s a lot of recruitment from other countries in the league. It’s such an attractive league, so players also want to come here. And I think it’s really important that we keep on helping academies to grow so we can get as many as possible being successful in the WSL or WSL2.
on what we’ve been up to with the players that didn’t go away on international duty:
I like board games! If I get time, I love to play board games. I haven’t been playing paddle or board games with the players. It was new as well, because we had a couple of return-to-play players at home, and then, of course, Kim Little, who’s retired from Scotland, so she was here. And that was also very new for us as a staff, and for Kim to be so long without team training. I think for the first time doing it, it’s been going well, trying to replicate as many moments as possible that are game-realistic for her throughout the week. But, yes, we’ve been on pitch and playing football during the international break.
on Catley’s concussion with Australia:
Yes, head injury, so she wasn’t in the squad today, but hopefully she can be back, but we’ll see.
on if there will be gaps to exploit for both sides with players away at the Asian Cup:
We are really happy with the squad and how everyone has been showing that they’re ready to play. That’s going to be key for us this block as well. And, of course, we’ll have to see how London City is going to cover for those players, especially, I think, in the midfield and centre-back positions, what that will look like for them. But we’ll see that on matchday when the team comes in.
on how they play with lots of different systems:
It will be different, and we’ll also see which players will start and finish for them. So we’ll have to be prepared because they have different qualities. But, yes, it will be a different game, and we’ve played London City once, and now they have a new coach, so we’ll see how he wants to go into a game against us. But, yes, of course we’ve analysed them and had a look at how they’ve been playing so far, but let’s see what they do on Sunday.
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