‘We see it as a chance to show who we are’ Slegers keen to right wrongs in Koge clash
Renee Slegers says her Arsenal side are keen to right some early season wrongs in Tuesday night’s Champions League opener against Danish champions HB Koge at Meadow Park. Arsenal have two goals from their first three WSL games, which were scored 188 minutes apart.
Slegers says the team have reviewed where the issues have been in front of goal and they are keen to rectify in front of what promises to be more low block opposition against Koge. ‘We have looked at it because we want to learn from all our matches, especially this one off the back of Palace.
‘We have looked at it and the way we progress up the pitch is good, the way we dominate and the way we get the ball forward in many ways is good. But then the final third and the chances that we set up we have looked at again from a tactical, technical and psychological perspective.
‘The quality in the squad is so good and that makes the results very frustrating because we want to do those things better. A positive from the United game is the mentality of the players late on and we force a goal in the 94th minute, we take that with us. But we want to score more goals. We see tomorrow as a chance to show who we are, the things we have been doing well, the Arsenal way and the dominance then leading to goals.’
Slegers also says the promise of a new competition, in the shape of the Champions League, is a source of energy to her and her players, ‘We look forward to the occasion because it’s also another competition. We go into Europe again. We’re going to play in the Champions League under the lights against international opposition.
‘So it’s nice. We go into something new. And this is step one in our Champions League journey. So, yeah, definitely, you really feel excitement and a fresh energy going into this game.’
Slegers also hinted at heavy rotation with back to back away games against Chelsea and Manchester City in the WSL as well as an away Champions League game against Paris FC next week. ‘The reason we have the size of the squad we do with basically only senior international players with so much quality doubled up in every position is so that we can use the whole squad, especially when there are short turnarounds.
‘We need freshness for this game, it is only a couple of days since we played United and we have Chelsea the weekend after. We have to make sure players are fresh and other players deserve opportunities to play as well, we want to optimally use the squad. Every player could start for us, either against Chelsea or Koge.’
The post ‘We see it as a chance to show who we are’ Slegers keen to right wrongs in Koge clash appeared first on Arseblog News - the Arsenal news site.