Renee Slegers: Arsenal's Champions League win a 'step in the right direction'

Interim head coach Renee Slegers says Arsenal's 4-1 win over Valerenga in the UEFA Women's Champions League was a "step in the right direction" after a challenging week.

The Gunners ran out comfortable winners in front of a 6,000-strong crowd at the Emirates Stadium, getting their European campaign back on track having been dismantled 5-2 by Bayern Munich in what proved to be one of Jonas Eidevall's last games in charge.

Eidevall resigned as head coach on Tuesday morning, less than 72 hours after Arsenal lost 2-1 to rivals Chelsea in the WSL, with Slegers tasked with leading the team against Valerenga.

And the former Dutch international was pleased with the response from Arsenal's players, crediting the group post-match for "sticking to the task" at hand after a difficult couple of days.

"There's been a lot of emotions," Slegers said. "Managing emotions and trying to stick to the task ahead of us what we needed to do to perform.

"I'm happy for them and it's a credit to them because they also got together [before the game] and felt they needed to step up and that's what you saw on the pitch. I think it's good that they did it.

"We prepared for them being player for player in the press, especially on the goal kick. We had a plan for it because if you go player for player, you can get 2v2, 3v3, 4v4's on top and that's what we tried to manipulate.

"We just had to find some variety in that because they started to read the one option we had. If you are successful at bypassing, then you have acres of space and you have 1v1s. If you're not successful and you are in trouble - that was the main puzzle."

Pressed on whether the win would provide Arsenal's players with a much-needed confidence boost ahead of the WSL clash with West Ham, she added: "I always think confidence is such a hard thing to talk about. What exactly is confidence?

"I think already since we played Chelsea you are seeing players perform in their better form and I think we are going a step in the right direction."

Slegers was keen to point out an area of potential improvement for Arsenal, who were put to the sword by a quick-fire Pernille Harder hat-trick when taking on Bayern, admitting there's work to do in dealing with balls over the top.

"We had to deal with a lot of long goal kicks which doesn't happen as much in the WSL, so that was new for us," she remarked.

"Rosenborg did it during our Champions League qualifier. I think at times we dealt with it really well and that's the main thing. I think we can have a little look at how we can defend the spacing behind the backline."

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