Renée: “We take ownership and move on” | Quotes | News

Renée Slegers says her team haven’t had too much trouble moving on from Saturday’s disappointing 3-1 defeat away to Lyon in the UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final second leg.

Attention has quickly had to turn back to business in the Barclays Women’s Super League, as we travel to Broadfield Stadium in Crawley on Wednesday to take on Brighton & Hove Albion at 7.45pm.

Ahead of the game, our head coach was asked in her pre-match press conference what makes the Seagulls – who are unbeaten in their last five games in all competitions – so difficult to play against.

“I think Brighton is a very good team,” she said. “I think they’re very brave and convinced in the way they play, both in and out of possession. But I think what they also have is they have a versatility and they can do things in different ways, adjusting to opposition and circumstances, which I’m really impressed with. So they’ve been doing really, really well and they’re a hard team to play against.”

One of Brighton’s recent wins came against us – a 2-0 victory for them at Meadow Park in the Adobe Women’s FA Cup, and off the back of that we’ll have to make sure we’re ready to handle their set-piece threat.

“It’s always part of our preparation,” Renée added. “We have a plan in place. We have to look at what we have, what structure we create, what qualities we possess to be able to defend it and look at opposition qualities. We’re very aware of both goals we conceded – from a throw-in and from a corner at Borehamwood. We’ve seen what they’ve been doing. They have some really, really tall players and threats and strong headers of the ball. So it’s going to be a key area in the game tomorrow.”

We currently have three games in hand on both Chelsea and Manchester City above us, meaning our remaining four WSL matches will take place across the next two Wednesdays and Sundays, so can it be an advantage to have so many games in a short space of time if we find momentum?

“We’re happy that we’re in a big schedule,” Renée said. “We know where we’re going with the group. We’re constantly growing and we constantly want to test ourselves. So we want to play games. So we have a couple of games in hand because of the schedule. But if you look at where the group’s at and how everyone is very eager to perform for Arsenal and look to do everything we can that’s within our control, then we’re happy to have the schedule in front of us.”

We also asked Renée how the players have reacted to the weekend’s defeat in training.

“I think the reaction post-game, you could see straight away, humble in defeat,” she said. “We travelled home, we had a day off for everyone to digest it and get reset. Yesterday we were back in together. I think so far it also says something about the growth of the team, the way we respond to things, to setbacks, how we deal with it, how we put things in perspective, we’re reflective, we come together, we take ownership and we move on. That’s everything that happened yesterday. Today was all about Brighton, preparation for Brighton tomorrow. We had a good session on the pitch with a lot of energy. We look forward to the game tomorrow.”