Arsenal drew 1-1 away at Brighton on Wednesday night in the WSL. Tsunoda gave Brighton a first half lead but Frida Maanum equalised in the second half. The result means that Arsenal can no longer win the WSL with Manchester City confirmed as champions. Renee Slegers spoke to the press post-match, all three questions are from Arseblog News.
On a lacklustre first half…
It’s end of season with short turnarounds and then of course that was disappointing the second leg against Lyon because we’re actually in the 86 minute, we’re still very close. It’s level so it’s one goal and then we are out and we all felt that we weren’t at our best. So we had to manage that and deal with that. And we did that, I think and then you move on and you go to Brighton. And what exactly plays in the back of your head still, I don’t know, but we did everything to have full attention and focus on Brighton. But first half isn’t good enough. We don’t get in our pressure so we have to run too much without the ball.
So we’re much more aggressive and clearer with what we do in the second half, which helped us a lot to be more dangerous. And I think they don’t create much at all, but they score from second phase set piece, which is frustrating. We score one goal to come back, which is good. We had momentum we get fresh legs and then we were all believing that we could create a second goal, even though we all felt it was hard because Brighton is a very good team, credit to Brighton because they defend it in those moments in the second half with a lot of bodies. And we had some good chances, I thought but it wasn’t enough today. It’s disappointing.
On whether her instructions at half-time were tactical or more to do with raising intensity…
The team talk before the game was more around those things. And then what we did, what we decided to do in the halftime was to stay calm because there’s only one set piece. Now we’re just gonna have to find the solutions and bring the intensity and then we go again.
On drawing too many games this season…
It’s typical. I think we were in another phase at the start of season where we would score that first goal, but then held back a little and then invited the opposition back in, or there was only one goal difference. I think today we had to come from behind and come back so that was different. If you look at this season so far, only one defeat in the league and that was away against City who win the league. It’s not a bad record, but we have to get all these other games over the line, so definitely part of the review- there will be a big end of season review because we always do that- we did that last season, but we want to win more trophies for us now.
14.van Domselaar; 31.Holmberg, 3.Wubben-Moy, 5.L.Codina, 24.Hinds (11.McCabe ‘66); 10.Little(c), 21.Pelova (8.Mariona HT); 15.Smith (9.Mead ‘66), 12.L.Maanum (25.Blackstenius ‘66), 19.Foord (18.Kelly ‘83); 23.Russo
Subs: 2.Fox, 6.Williamson, 13.Votikova, 28.Borbe