Jonas Eidevall praises Arsenal response to Beth Mead injury

Jonas Eidevall has praised how his Arsenal side have dealt with losing Beth Mead for the remainder of the campaign with an ACL injury.

Mead - Arsenal's player of the year last term - sustained the injury in stoppage time during the Gunners' 3-2 defeat to Manchester United in November.

Arsenal drew 1-1 against Juventus in their first match without Mead and were arguably unfortunate to not come away with all three points, before beating Everton 1-0 on Saturday.

Leah Williamson and Rafaelle returned to the match day squad for the first time in two months for Arsenal's victory over the Toffees, but Eidevall's side continue to be without Kim Little and Lina Hurtig.

"I think when we lost Beth at the end of the United game that still... yes, we have Leah and Rafa back practicing with us and Leah could play 25 minutes with us today, but other than that, nothing has changed," said Eidevall.

"For us to handle that situation, first going away to Italy, having a strong performance, getting a result, and now today winning, I think it's strong for the team. I think we see a team here that was in an adverse moment that we now hope we are on the verge of turning around with players returning.

"But I think we have been managing a difficult period so far very, very well and that's important if we want to be a winning team."

Vivianne Miedema hit the stunning decisive goal against Everton, jinking past two players and arrowing the ball into the top corner. It was the second goal in successive starts since the forward was granted a leave of absence for rest and recovery at the end of October.

With Everton lining up in a slightly unfamiliar 4-3-3 as opposed to their usual back three, Eidevall explained that having fully fresh players like Miedema was key to working out how to break them down.

"I think that has been important obviously," the Arsenal boss said of Miedema's break. "I think one thing that I'm most pleased about with today is we set out in a way in the beginning where they (Everton) were a little bit different than we thought.

"We had a hard time just getting a hold of them in their build up in the first 15 minutes of the game. But we managed to work together with the players into figuring out how we're going to change our structure and after that I think we were very solid in our pressing.

"But that requires that we have players that are fresh, that want to take a part in that and that wants to adjust and take responsibility. She's a big part in why we're very successful in that."

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