Our 4-3 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in pre-season has given Renee Slegers and her coaching staff much to mull over in the build-up to the beginning of the Barclays Women’s Super League in September.
Reflecting on Saturday’s friendly in Borehamwood, our head coach said there were plenty of learnings to take from what was a topsy-turvy afternoon against our north London rivals.
“It was good to see the fans again,” she added. “And because we've been working hard without people seeing what we've been doing. And so it was good to connect again with the fans.
“Of course, you think about the result straight away and we don't like losing, but this is a pre-season game and there's so many things, there's such a wider context with things we manage and taking into account that new players are coming back, players playing out of position, minutes that we need to manage, Tottenham that does something different from what they did last year, they've changed coach.
“It was a really good test for us. I think we got punished for a couple of things. I don't think everything in what we did was not good enough, but we were punished in a couple of things. That's good lessons for us and we learned from this. This happens in pre-season and everything we can do is just look back and move forward.
“I think that's what we're really good at, it's one of the strengths in our team and somehow you never like losing, but we do get some answers on things that we need to work on and that's what we got today, so we're going to work really hard.”
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Renee gave Arsenal supporters the chance to see summer signings Anneke Borbe, Taylor Hinds and Olivia Smith in action for the first time, and she said our new recruits are all settling in well.
“They're all really good people, they're contributing in their way, they're settling in, they're integrating into the team, the culture of the team, the style of play, so that's all going really well,” she said.”
Asked about the impact Victoria Pelova - who scored a tidy opening goal early on - can make in attacking areas, Renee said: “I think she's a very intelligent player for spaces. She can play different roles for us, so she's good at being a little bit lower on the pitch, but you can also see that she's, I think, developed the last couple of years to get output higher up the pitch as well and it was really good to see her goal today because that's something she's been focusing on.”
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We’re back at Meadow Park on Wednesday for our next pre-season test against West Ham United, and Renee is under no illusions that it will be another tough fixture.
“This was Tottenham and now we're going to prepare for West Ham, but during pre-season we have a lot of focus on ourselves anyway, but we know that West Ham made it hard for us last season and I think they are building something, so it will be a really challenging game again on Wednesday,” she said.
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