After a tumultuous Sunday evening at Meadow Park ended in a 4-3 victory over West Ham United, Mariona Caldentey and Leah Williamson reflected on the match.
As two of the game's goalscorers, the pair were instrumental in our squad's second-half comeback, as we scored three times in five minutes.
Here is everything they had to say after the match...
on the rollercoaster display...
MC: Well, we won so we take that but I think we need to be better, because we came back from the national teams, some of those with jet lag, but we can't concede three goals in a game. So we were lucky that we could make it, but we need to keep working.
on what we were missing in the first half...
LW: We needed to be better on the ball. We just weren't getting our rhythm and then we started to panic a little bit. I think getting the goal was really, really important in the first half - that was the quality that we needed. And in the second half, we came out a lot better. But I agree, conceding three goals in a game, it's not good enough. That's not our standard.
on what Mariona was feeling before she stepped up to take the decisive penalty...
MC: Well, scoring a goal is always a nice feeling, right Leah? But, I mean, we didn't play our best game and we won. And I think that's the positive thing. We show that we care about that, that we are passionate about it and that we can make it, so I think we need to have high expectations.
on the tense ending to the match...
LW: There's a couple of battle scars from that goalmouth scramble as well. People put their bodies on the line. So I think it's really that shows, like Mariona says, we have a lot of pride in playing for Arsenal. We want to win and we want to win properly, but sometimes we just need to get the job done. Today, that's what we did.
on preparing for the big month ahead...
I think now we have two weeks with not too many games like in other leagues, so I think we have to take that. We have to do the balance between rest and getting ready, getting fit, and I think we will be fine. We will be ready for the big games.
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.