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Arsenal’s head coach Jonas Eidevall spoke to the media after their 0-0 draw away at West Ham

United on Sunday. Here is what he had to say.

A lot of the challenges of the first half of the season were around building a new defensive

structure and now the challenge of the second half is to build those relationships in attack?

Jonas Eidevall answered by saying, “you might be right with that with players coming in and of course

it is about building relationships, but when I see the game and I see the chances that we created, we

created a lot of chances today and we don’t finish them well enough to force their goalkeeper to

make any really good saves, could have had more finishes on target, but the structure when we

attack, we are working on it, but it actually pays off a lot of time today but we don’t get the end

product and that is frustrating but it is not due to a lack of goalscoring opportunities because there

are plenty, and especially in the second half, more pleasing for me because there we are not giving

them anything either, in the first half there still being able to hit us a little bit on the counterattack

but in the second half nothing, but we have a structure where we control it”.

Frida Maanum attacked the right half space in the first half then moved back to the left half space

in the second half, what were the reasons for this?

Eidevall wouldn’t give much away about tactics incase they have to play West Ham again this season

and said the change in the second half was more due to how the game panned out.

Are you worried about the confidence of the attack and is this an issue having not scored from

open play against Chelsea and not scoring today?

The Arsenal head coach didn’t think it was an issue with the quality that they have, “I don’t think

there is any reason, like today we need to do better with our goalscoring opportunities. It is small

details” Eidevall continued and that he was open and transparent that they needed another forward

in the transfer window (especially with a hectic Spring coming up), but also that he believes in the

players they have and there is a lot of quality there. Eidevall also said that all the forward options

were ready to play today so there are plenty of options and no need for any excuses.

What do you think is the biggest thing stopping the side putting away those opportunities at the

moment?

Eidevall responded by saying they scored nine goals against Leeds United and three against Aston

Villa and he can’t see a pattern. He added the sample size is too small to draw conclusions from one

game. “If it had been a trend I had been seeing then I would be really worried about it but to be

honest we played West Ham, Leeds, Villa, Chelsea and Zurich, how many goals have we scored in

those games? I think it is 22 in five games with these forwards available so I am not going to say

there is a problem scoring goals when we scored 22 goals in the last five games”

What do you think the biggest difference was in the two recent league games (West Ham and

Chelsea) and not being able to score when creating a lot of chances (21 shots against West Ham)?

“It is football, of course we want to score in every opportunity that we have, we don’t have robots, it

is a human element, it is small details if you put a goalscoring opportunity away or not and my belief

in these players doesn’t change because we didn’t score a goal today” Eidevall said.

He carried on to say that they were disappointed with the result but not with the performance. He finished by saying “that if they get the same opportunities next game, they put it away, I am 100% confident of it”.

With the competitiveness of the WSL this season, a result like this isn’t going to determine if you

win the league of not?

Eidevall said he was more worried about the use by date on his milk in the fridge than what is

happening in the other games. He continued by saying it is a competitive league but it was a

dominant display by Arsenal and that West Ham would be happy with the point. “If you play this

game 100 times with these goal scoring opportunities, there will be a lot of Arsenal wins."