By Chloe Reynolds (17/2/26)
Above: Renee Slegers in her press conference Photo: Arsenal FC
Arsenal boss Renee Slegers brushed aside the narrative that her side’s Champions League play-off was already decided after a 4-0 win last week in Belgium, suggesting that opponents OH Leuven have the freedom to go all out and that her team should prepare for different situations on the night. Frida Maanum also spoke to the media.
Arsenal faced Leuven last week and earned a convincing 4-0 win over the Belgian side and Slegers has said that there are multiple scenarios ahead of this game in the way she could go tactical wise: “there’s two answers to it and one that’s easy because we’ve beat this opponent twice, and on the other hand, it’s a different scenario now and they might do things different and we’ll have to anticipate that. But, of course, we took a result that we’re happy with away. It’s 4-0 now, so I’ll have to manage the game really well and be proud that they will come out and do something different”
Maanum then added “first and foremost, tomorrow is about getting the result, but, of course, they might go come out and do something different. The more we have the ball, the better, but we still want to be very purposeful with the way we attack them. I think us scoring goals can be very important as well for where the game goes. We have fantastic players and I think if you look at lately how we’ve been creating chances and variety of chances in a variety of places that are scoring for us and assisting, that’s really good.”
Slegers also confirmed the team news for tomorrow’s game and if Taylor Hinds who was called up to the England squad earlier on today would be in contention “so Taylor Hinds has progressed really well. She did a full session with us today, and she’ll be in squad tomorrow, Kyra wasn’t on the pitch today, She was ill, so we’ll see how she is tomorrow, the other one is Anneke Borbe – she’s done full sessions, so she will be available tomorrow
Maanum also spoke about the impact of playing with a variety of players and the connection it brings to the team “For example Stina (Blackstenius) and Alessia (Russo) are quite different in the nine position. I enjoy that challenge to play with different players, and like the last game, I connected well with Caitlin (Foord), so I think it’s a good challenge, like I said, and it’s fun.
The Dutch coach, also spoke about how her side will handle this familiar opponent “I don’t know what they are saying in their camp, what does success mean for them in this game and we’ll see if they look at their league games and they tend to be a little bit higher with higher pressure and they’re aggressive. So let’s see if they want to do that tomorrow. I think that’s one option we’ve seen. Do they go and be more direct and look for counter attacks directly? So we’ll see. There’s a couple of options for them to, explore, looking at, what do we want to bring to the game other than potential scenarios?, like we’ve been doing really well as a team. Still, there’s always an unknown going into the game, but we focus on what we know we can do.”
Last year the Gunners won the Champions League trophy in Lisbon after beating Barcelona, and Maanum has revealed that winning the trophy again is something that they speak a lot about within the training ground “, I would say we spoke about it quite a lot at the beginning of the season, and then there’s obviously a new season, new goals and we want to win that trophy again, but I think it’s always nice to reflect on it as a team together with the girls and the staff as well, look back on pictures and see what we went through last season. I think that’s a good reminder that we want to do it again this year.
This will also be one of the last games for the Australian trio of Steph Catley, Kyra Cooney- Cross and Caitlin Foord before they head off for the Australian Cup, and Slegers has explained the game plan and how many games they could potentially be missing: “of course when we plan for the season, we know that that tournament is there and that’s potential for them to miss games for us. That is what it is.”
“I think if you look at the season, we want all players available constantly, and that’s going to be important in this phase of the season where we know that 3 players are going to be gone, and then on the tournament. It’s always unpredictable, and there’s always things that happen in the season that you have to deal with, and there will be no difference I think from a recruitment perspective, if that’s part of the question.
“I think this will be hopefully a maximum of 3 games. So that’s what we’ll have to take but they’re going to be very proud of going away representing their country in a big tournament and we wish them all the best. Of course, to be with us 2 more games, we’ll be really happy and to get them back into the team, to keep on progressing and keep on. performing well and getting as many ways, of course, for the second half of the season together with them.”
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