Renee Slegers reacts to 5-2 defeat to Aston Villa

Arsenal were beaten 5-2 by Aston Villa in the WSL at Villa Park on Wednesday evening. Jordan Nobbs, Kirsty Hanson, Chastity Grant and Rachel Daly gave Villa a 4-0 lead. Quickfire goals from Blackstenius and Russo briefly threatened a comeback before Chastity Grant scored again for the hosts. Renee Slegers spoke to the press post-match, the first three questions are from Arseblog News.

On how much the seven starting line up changes and proximity of the Lyon match contributed to the performance…
I think partnerships are very important in football so players understand each other. I made the decision to do it this way tonight because we see the players every day in training and they train together and play together every day. That is what we wanted to do today but partnerships are important. That is a factor but when you lose a game and you are not happy with the performance you are always going to go to why and there are a million different directions you can go and it’s probably a little bit of this and a bit of that. Of course we will try to find out what we can learn from this and how we move forward because we need to learn, this will happen more often if we want to compete in the biggest competitions that we play games that are mentally and physically very demanding and we will have short turnarounds and will need to travel. There are a lot of learnings and from our end, on all fronts and that is the only way I can look at it now to go forwards.

On continued issues defending in transition…
I believe in the players that we have in the squad and I think so many times we have done it so well because so many teams try to counter attack on us so that is always a theme we work with. We will analyse the game, respect to Aston Villa as well, they secured their spot in the WSL and they come away from two wins, they ar free, they are brave today and they put a lot of pressure on us. They have quality up top which we were aware of with speed but it is definitely something we want to do better because we are very disappointed with conceding five goals today.

On why Jenna Nighswonger wasn’t in the squad…
There are so many players in the squad and we have to make decisions, we have so many available and we had to play around with all the scenarios and cover different positions. So that’s what we came from as a coaching staff and the way I previewed the game. Jenna is doing really well but we have such a great squad with so many good players, what players do we need in which moments?

On the team being emotionally and physically drained after Lyon…
My mind is already spinning thinking about whether there was something we could have done differently. What would I do next time? It was a huge achievement to go to the final and I think we were very happy about that in a good way, I don’t think in that sense it cost us too much energy. But I think the preparation for the game, the travelling, everything we invested into that, it was so much. But afterwards we have stayed very calm and done everything to recover physically and mentally to get ready again. It is only two days in between with travelling, we have done everything but we want to tweak the details and reflect and see if we can do things better next time.

On the responsibility of the players…
I am going to gather my thoughts, the staff will do that and players are doing that already because they want to understand and they don’t want to lose. They are disappointed and everyone is doing that and we will come together and align what we are thinking to move forward.

On the midfield setup…
Vic and Kyra are really good players for now and for the future, so they have done well. Against Aston Villa, with their high, player for player press we needed players who can play out of their pressure and who are good on the ball and in one v one situations, so that was one of the considerations.

On van Domselaar not being in the squad…
No injury, that was a little bit of reaction so she couldn’t be part of the squad today but hopefully she is fine soon.

On the scheduling of the game playing into the performance…
Yeah scheduling is very important to give yourself the best opportunity to prepare and execute, but if you are active in so many competitions games are going to come fast and this was reality for us and I think all we can do is what is within our control and look at how we can learn from this.

1.Zinsberger; 62.Reid, 3.Wubben-Moy (6.Williamson HT), 7.Catley, 11.McCabe(c) (12.L.Maanum ‘80); 32.Cooney-Cross (10.Little HT), 8.Mariona; 9.Mead, 21.Pelova (23.Russo HT), 18.Kelly (19.Foord ‘61); 25.Blackstenius

Unused: 2.Fox, 13.Walti, 28.Ilestedt, 40.Williams

The post Renee Slegers reacts to 5-2 defeat to Aston Villa appeared first on Arseblog News - the Arsenal news site.