After our Gunners booked a place in the Subway Women's League Cup semi-finals with a victory over Brighton, head coach Renée Slegers reflected on the result and our progress as a squad.
Here is everything she had to say:
on the game of two halves...
Yeah, and I think we knew that Brighton was going to ask us a lot of questions, so what they do in their build is they invest a lot of numbers, they rotate, and we had to solve that from a pressing perspective, and it took us a half to get that right, or actually at the end of the first half we got that part right. And then as well, they have an aggressive press and we had to play out of that pressure. When you beat that press, there's a lot of space, but we didn't exploit that as well as we did in the second half. I think what we did in the first half was break them down and make them tired as well.
So we got all the details right at half-time and spoke to the girls. The girls were very engaged as well, so we knew exactly what we needed to do in the second half, and that's what we did. And then I think in the 65th minute we scored 1-0, and then the other two goals came quickly after. We speak about momentum a lot with the girls and then I think when you have positive momentum, that's the moment you have to score your goals. That's really what we did. So I'm very proud of the girls tonight because it's a very hard game to play. Brighton away on a weekday. We played last Sunday and they asked a lot of questions, so I'm very happy with the win and a clean sheet.
on our squad's momentum...
Yeah, no, we're very good at the moment, I think, as a group, and I just said to the girls as well, everything you do on the training ground, so meeting-wise, training-wise, what they do in the gym and everything else, that all matters, and that leads to what we can deliver on the pitch today again, and no, I'm very happy for the girls, because they invested a lot of work.
on heavy rotation in the match...
Yeah, we have new partnerships on the pitch. At the same time, they train together every day, so it's not new for them to play together, but we could see it against Crystal Palace as well. In that game, we needed the first half and it was a little bit the same in this game as well. I think it has to do a little bit with the break and coming back, but if you look at the second half Crystal Palace, second half Brighton, very good football, and we really execute what we want to execute, so very happy for the girls.
on Mariona's impact off the bench...
Yeah, she's unbelievable, I think you see everything she does on the ball, her timing, her movement, where she needs to position herself, but also what she does on the ball. So she has so many assets to use. She can combine, she can play a through ball, she can dribble.
I think she most of the time makes the right decisions at the right moment. She can recognise our overloads: if we have an overload or not, if we stay on this side, and yeah, she's just very intelligent, but also out of possession. For example, in the second half, she has to kind of manage three or four Brighton players on her side, with Katie McCabe and Kyra behind her, but she manages that so well.
on building momentum ahead of Chelsea on Sunday...
It's very good for the group. We feel like we're doing things together. We're developing high value on our clean sheets, so we're very happy with that today again. We tried to score different types of goals and I think that happened today again, so it's very good for the group. now it's just about recovering and then really trying to get as ready as we can for Sunday.
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.
