Arsenal were 2-0 winners away at London City Lionesses in the WSL on Sunday lunchtime thanks to goals in each half from Olivia Smith and Stina Blackstenius. Renee Slegers spoke to the press post-match, the first two questions are from Arseblog News.
On her thoughts on the performance in tricky conditions…
Super happy with the clean sheet. Two goals scored. We wanted to come out fast, we score the first goal after 15 minutes, I think. We knew that the end of the game is going to be important with how their games usually flow, how our games usually flow and the quality of our game changes, the quality of their game changes. So we had to manage the game really well today and we did that. It wasn’t the flowing passing Arsenal way with high technical quality today. But we had to find ways to win. We had to deal with the circumstances and we did that really well today, so lots of learning still, but we did business. So happy with the win.
On starting Anneke Borbe over Daphne van Domselaar in goal…
Anneke’s been doing really well and it was about readiness, who was most ready to perform and our decision today was to give Anneke a start.
On Smith and Kelly swapping wings…
We can look at who has moments and what sort of quality do we need on what side, where the game is at and then we can make decisions, or they have the ownership to make those in game decisions as well.
On LCL posing threat in transition…
I think especially the moments in the first half, we want to have a look at to defend those moments better when teams go vertical against us and attacks are fast. So that’s something we want to learn from and do better. I think in the second half, it’s more of a management situation where they make changes, we’ve made changes, they are chasing a goal, so they put more numbers forward and it’s more how we manage those moments better. But especially the first off we want to learn from.
28.Borbe; 2.Fox, 6.Williamson, 3.Wubben-Moy, 11.McCabe (24.Hinds ‘84); 10.Little(c) (21.Pelova ‘60), 8.Mariona (5.L.Codina ‘84); 18.Kelly, 12.L.Maanum (25.Blackstenius ‘60), 15.Smith (9.Mead ‘72); 23.Russo
Unused: 13.Votikova, 14.van Domselaar, 31.Holmberg