Renee Slegers reacts to 1-1 draw with Aston Villa

Arsenal were held to a 1-1 draw at home to Aston Villa in the WSL on Saturday lunchtime. Frida Maanum gave Arsenal an early lead but a poor second half performance led to Lucy Parker scoring a stoppage time equaliser for Aston Villa. Renee Slegers spoke to the press post-match, the first two questions are from Arseblog News.

On not creating enough threat in the second half…
I think we we have more shots (than last weekend) at least, which we, of course, want at home at the Emirates. We always look at how many shots do we get off on target and I think today it’s not the percentage we want to have. So that’s a key thing for us. I think we have more established possession. I think we have more solutions today to do it. I just don’t think we have the the intensity and urgency in and around the box to kill the game, because we get an early goal. But as long as it’s 1 nil the opposition always feels like they’re still in the game, you only need one moment, and that’s what happened today.

On the tempo of the second half being very slow from an Arsenal perspective…
I think there’s two things, in the way they Villa plays and what we had to solve in our own half, they pressed very aggressively, so that’s where we had to do things quickly and move a lot to be able to solve that. But then in their half, there was less aggressiveness from them, so that’s when we then have to dictate the tempo and get the technical detail right. I don’t think we were at the level that we need to be able to create bigger, clear cut chances today.

On the lack of dynamism in the second half…
We’re gonna review this with the players and it’s really important to understand. All I can say is that I believe in these players and they can play at such a high level and for some reason we didn’t perform at our highest level today and there are some, like I just said, there’s some things in it- intensity, urgency in what we do in getting to the right areas that we’ve decided that these are the areas for us that we want to go to and attack. But then doing that with conviction, then why that doesn’t happen today. That’s of course, something will have to review.

On Villa being aggressive in the press…
That’s part of that game. They want to press, they want to be physical, they want to be 1v1. And if you play that way, you’re going to have to be really aggressive, because if you’re not, then you’ll be beat. So, yeah, that was definitely part of the game. I think at some moments or certain areas of the pitch, we do that really well, we match that, and at some moments, we don’t.

On whether anything has changed from the first two games when Arsenal scored nine goals…
No, not for me, no. So that’s I think, where we need to stay very levelled. I think like I said, we are in the final third a lot. There are 19 shots today and that’s close to where we want to be in these kind of games. So I don’t think we should be over analysing it. Of course, we’ll analyse it, but we’re still getting there, so that, for me, is good, and I think we need to stay very levelled in everything we do and how we’re going to review it.

On the margin for error shrinking in the title race…
Yeah, I know, yes there is pressure because, now we’ve lost four points and that’s not what we wanted. But the only thing we can do is learn now from this and learn very fast because the next game is going to be very important for us.

On whether Kelly and Hinds could have come on earlier…
Hindsight is a beautiful thing, it’s always those hard decisions down the sideline, do we control it now? It’s the players that are on the pitch, because they feel the game, they’re in the game and all those things. So do we need fresh legs and intensity? Every coach will know, that’s always going to be the dilemma but I think they made a positive impact when they came on.

14.van Domselaar; 2.Fox, 26.Reid, 7.Catley, 11.McCabe (24.Hinds ‘86); 10.Little(c), 8.Mariona (3.Wubben-Moy 90+3); 9.Mead (18.Kelly ‘86), 12.L.Maanum (21.Pelova ‘64), 15.Smith (19.Foord ‘64); 23.Russo

Unused: 1.Zinsberger, 5.L.Codina, 25.Blackstenius, 32.Cooney-Cross

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