_Arsenal continued their poor start to the season with a 1-1 draw at home to Birmingham City on Saturday. Oceane Hurtre gave Birmingham a second half lead before Olivia Smith equalised. Renee Slegers spoke to the press post match, the first two questions are from Arseblog News._
**On her thoughts and emotions post-match…**
Emotion is frustration. And there was another game out of six in the league now, I think, right? It’s similar. In a similar way, the game plays out, where we should have won. We should win against Birmingham at home. They have one dangerous break and they score from it and that’s the one player we needed to stop and we didn’t in that moment. And then we end up in a scenario again where we have to chase it. So yeah, a lot of frustration, if that’s the emotion.
But if I look at the game, I think in the first half, it’s hard for us to build momentum because I think the tempo needed to be higher to basics in everything, in the duelling positional detail, all the ball basics, I think we turn it over at times and then we lose momentum. So that takes energy for the team, physically and mentally. Second half, of course, there is the goal we concede but I think then after that we play with urgency, strong willingness to create. I think we have total in the game of 27 shots, if that’s right. So we create a lot, Liv got a really good goal to come back, but then we can’t we can’t get the second one in the net, which is, of course, very frustrating.
**On whether this is fixable…**
Yeah, of course, I’m sitting here now straight after the game, where there’s just a game that’s been played that I need to process and there’s emotions, of course, as well. But yeah, I think so because it would have been a bigger issue if we don’t play the Arsenal way and we don’t get control of games and we can’t dominate the way we want to dominate. We’ve done that in all games. We aren’t defensively solid enough at the moment. And we have a hard time. It’s about boxes and we have a hard time putting the ball into the net and everything in between is good and there’s a lot of good things happening as well. So if that will not have been the case, then we would have concerns, but at the moment, I really see the perspective and it’s about those two areas that we really.. brutal facts that we really need to do better.
**On Olivia Smith’s equaliser…**
She got back from Canada and had one and a half sessions and did well for Canada, like I said, she was pain free again, she had some back issues, fell on her shoulder with Canada, so she had some shoulder pain, so that’s why she was down once or twice. But she’s a brilliant player. She scores a fantastic goal and she can do those moments for us, but she also needs to be consistent in the basics. So there’s still a lot of growth areas for her, which she knows about. So she needs to continue to work hard, but the talent that she has, like I said, a couple of days ago, it’s the best I’ve seen probably in women’s football. So there is a really high ceiling for her.
**On Kim Little and Frida Maanum being out today…**
Kim was not well so hopefully she will be back in a couple of days. Frida got a quad injury on international break, hopefully two or three weeks, but we’ll see how that goes. She’s super professional so she’ll do everything she can to be back.
**On concerns over conceding goals on the counter attack…**
I’m concerned about that because that’s not good enough. If you spend so much time on the ball, then you have to be really well positioned behind the ball and manage transitions really well, counterpress and have positions off the ball. I think in those moments we have been vulnerable. We have conceded a couple of goals like that. So I am concerned, it’s a big workable for us that we really need to get right for the next game.
**On her future…**
I’ve just gone off the pitch and I’m sitting with you guys here now. So everything I want is the best for us and all the best for these players. So that’s heavily on my mind and I still believe I can impact and help the team forwards. But I think it’s always, if that’s not the case anymore, then a change needs to happen, but I have belief in knowing where we can go with this team and it’s been really tough, but like I just said, if it had been all negative and we hadn’t been looking like Arsenal but that’s, in my opinion, not the case. There’s some details that we need to get right and those details are costing us right now, those margins are costing us and I believe that if we get that right, it’ll be good.
**On why she thinks players struggled with the basics in the first half…**
I think it’s a combination of factors. It’s, of course, how we set the team up as well and what positions we want them to pick up, the clarity of that. But then it’s about because these players are good. It could be mental factors there are a lot of thoughts or emotions, could be anything, but again, that’s the small margins, but those margins, they are important for us to create momentum in the game.
**On Birmingham moving Hurtre to the right wing to target Arsenal’s left side…**
We saw that, of course, because she has played on the left until now but played on the right side today. So we, of course, picked it up on something that they were planning to do in this game. And it’s about a lot of the things that we do is about positioning, but then it’s also about individual decisions and qualities that can help the team in those moments.
**How the midfield structure looked without Mariona…**
We had three potential number 10s for us injured today. So Mariona injured, Kim has been unwell, Frida Maanum injured. And so we made the decision to play Lessi in the 10 and Stina was in the 9. We’ve tried to create some consistency in the middle of the pitch with Mariona, sometimes on the left, sometimes in the middle. That wasn’t possible today, but I think with the players that we had available and the positions that they picked up, I think Kyra did well to adjust her position to create space for other players. I think Georgia was all over the pitch today, creating anything she could create from her position. And then with Less, she is such a good 9 and she’s done so well for England, so it was a really tough decision to say, what do we do with Less now? What’s best for the team? And we had a good conversation with Less, so she played in the 10.
**On only four of the 27 shots being on target today…**
I think it starts with how we set it up. So positionally what’s the quality of the final pass? So not just the assist the pass before the pass, is that setting someone up to do something good with the ball? So if you do that with detail and speed, then we’re more likely to find a good finishing position in the box and get the free cross or free pass where it needs to go. So that’s number one. And then I think the decision making of ‘am I the right way to do it now or do I need to give it to someone else?’ So that final decision under pressure and keeping composure and then it’s about the detail of the finish, but we know that these players can finish. So I think that will be the very last one, the other two are a lot more what we look at.
16.Misa; 31.Holmberg (2.Fox ‘77), 6.Williamson(c), 3.Wubben-Moy, 22.O.Batlle (5.de Almeida ‘86); 4.Stanway, 32.Cooney-Cross; 19.Baum (9.Foord ‘86), 23.Russo, 11.Smith; 25.Blackstenius (14.Reuteler ‘77)
Unused: 7.Catley, 24.Hinds, 28.Borbe, 40.Damm