Arsenal Women manager, Jonas Eidevall has rued a “disappointing” performance in a 1-0 loss to Liverpool in front of a record WSL crowd at Emirates Stadium.
A record Women’s Super League (WSL) crowd of 54,115 spectators turned out to watch Arsesenal suffer a surprise 1-0 loss to Liverpool at the Emirates Stadium, in which Miri Taylor struck a 48th minute winner for the Reds from Missy Bo Kearns’ cross.
The result meant that Arsenal have lost two of their three matches in all competitions so far this season – having suffered a shock First Qualifying Round exit to Paris FC in the UEFA Women’s Champions League.
“The only thing that is really disappointing today about setting the new WSL record attendance is that we didn’t perform better or get a better result to reward them”, commented Eidevall post-match on the fans’ enthusiasm in spite of the team’s poor performance.
Eidevall added that the crowd were amazing in how they motivated the players to the final whistle, as he continued: ” They were giving us absolutely everything during the game. They were magnificent, the energy that they gave and how they pushed on. We can’t expect anything more.”
Turning his attention to the result, Eidevall admitted that his team had been wasteful in their end product, as he explained: “We created a number of promising chances, but were unable to find the back of the net and as the game progressed, Liverpool were able to disrupt our play more and more.
“I think the first half we were very much in control and we need to do more with the situations that we created in the final third. Then the second half very much sets the tone of us conceding a goal early on and from there on we were struggling to generate any kind of momentum into that half.”
Eidevall also felt that the match was “unrhythmic” and lacked “necessary momentum” which resulted in “necessary disorganisation in the opposing team, so they get set after each situation and that frustrates me and I’m disappointed with that. We should be able to do better than that.”
Arsenal enjoyed 19 corners to Liverpool’s single corner but weren’t able to convert their chances with just three of 18 shots converted onto target.
Reflecting upon the Gunners’ lack of end product quality from corner kicks, Eidevall spoke of the need to to generate situations once corners had been taken and ensure that there is limited “dead ball” time, which allowed Liverpool time to refocus and defend their second-half lead.
“Corners are a great opportunity (to score) and of course when you have 19 corners it’s also about what you do after the corner. How do you keep the ball in play?
“How do you generate situations after that so that it doesn’t go from one dead ball situation to another dead ball situation, so you keep the game a little bit more alive and flowing and you’re making them make the decisions in their defensive organisation.
“I think they got a lot of time to reset their organisation, especially on their set pieces and we created too many of those for them in the second half.”
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