_Ahead of tonight’s Champions League round of 16 second leg against Leuven, Frida Maanum joined Renee Slegers’ pre-match press conference. Here is every word of Frida’s section. The third and fourth questions are from Arseblog News._
**On preparing for a game when you are already 4-0 ahead…**
For me in my head, this is the most important game right now, the game that’s right in front of us and that’s tomorrow against Leuven, that’s the only thing in my head and obviously we want to put in a professional and good performance and get the win.
**On Arsenal being in good form and scoring goals at the moment…**
It feels good, I love playing with a lot of good players that we have at Arsenal, it’s easy to play with them. They put me in good positions like the last game against Leuven, and yes, I think we’ve been ruthless in the way we attack, like Renee said, we’ve played with a lot of different players and I think that’s a strength of ours as well, to play with different players and connect them. I enjoy playing with them.
It’s a good challenge to play with different players. For example Stina and Alessia are quite different in the nine position. I enjoy that challenge to play with different players, and like the last game, I connected well with Caitlin, so I think it’s a good challenge, like I said, and it’s fun
_**On her goals against ASFAR and Leuven being her first since October and whether it played on her mind…**_
I am not going to lie and say I wasn’t thinking about it but I also know I bring a lot of different things into our game for Arsenal too. Things I know and things I speak about with the coaches but obviously you want to score goals and it was a kind of a relief, scoring in the Champions Cup and it has been nice to get on the score sheet again but for us the most important thing is to win games.
_**On her partnership with Olivia Smith upfront in the first leg…**_
Olivia is a fantastic player, and a good combiner to play together with. She has excellent speed – like you’ve seen in our games before. So, like I said earlier, I think I enjoy playing with different kinds of players, and I think it’s a challenge to play with different kinds of players. I enjoy that process, and I’ve enjoyed playing with Olivia.
**On winning the Champions League last season and the motivation to do it again…**
I would say we spoke about it quite a lot in the beginning of the season. And then it’s obviously a new season, new goals, and we want to win that trophy again.But I think it’s always nice to reflect on it as a team, together with the girls and the staff as well. Look back at the pictures and see what we went through last season. I think that’s a good reminder that we want to do it again this year.
**On the winter Olympics…**
It’s a big deal in Norway and we tend to be quite good at skiing and cross country skiing so I have been watching those!