Speaking ahead of our clash with Manchester City on Wednesday, Jonas Eidevall provided an update on our playing squad.
Vivianne Miedema and Beth Mead remain out with long-term injuries, but there’s good news elsewhere.
“Lia Walti is coming back into the squad after missing recent games,” said Eidevall. “There’s no concerns there for Wednesday.”
“On Teyah, she has still not been able to fully come back after the ACL injury, and we had a minor implication on the later stages of her rehab process, which forced her to wear a boot. But, as far as I’m aware of now, that boot is no longer used so it was not a long-term thing. Let’s hope she can be back on the pitch with us soon.”
With a busy fixture schedule and minutes to manage throughout the squad, our head coach also discussed the importance of rotation and remaining sharp, while also maintaining consistency.
“We have to start with the first game and of course, we will get some answers and how that will progress to the second game, but we’ll start by trying our very best to win the first. I think when you have less numbers, it means you will do less rotation because you have less players to choose from.
“From that sense, it might be easier for me than it is for Gareth. He has more players to choose from but I have less. It obviously means I have more players that will need to play more minutes in these three matches, but I think we’re at the stage both as a team and they are as individuals that they can handle it.’
Jonas Eidevall can move one step closer to silverware on Wednesday night as we host Manchester City in the semi-final of the FA Women’s Continental Tyres Cup.
Our head coach is ready for the challenge and has full belief in his squad, but knows that we will need to execute our gameplan to perfection.
“I think they’re really playing well at the moment and I think you can see that their underlying numbers are really strong as well,” said Eidevall in his pre-match press conference.
“When you know a team is good at something, the first thing you think about as a coach on all levels is to say how do we stop that from happening and how can that happen as little as possible.
“It’s like when you’re playing Lyon and you see that they have Wendie Renard and she scores 15 goals every season from her head. You will be like, okay, we are going to defend some corners against her, so how are we going to defend that, but more importantly we can’t give away 25 corners in the game and 10 free-kicks, because over time they will be good enough for it, so it’s about finding the balance for both. Limit the supply as much as possible, but then also have a really good strategy and positioning so you can deal with the situations when it occurs.
“Our preference is to control the game with the ball, but I think the reality is when you’re playing against a team like City, both teams will have spells with the ball and both teams will have spells without the ball. You will need to play a complete football match in that sense because you will need to control the set pieces that we spoke about, but also that you need to be good in possession, out of possession and both transitions.
“Sometimes you play very one-sided football matches which can only involve one of those things, but tomorrow I’m sure it will need to involve all five of those aspects and the team that wins will need to be good in all five.”
