‘We go there to win’ – Slegers looks ahead to Arsenal’s fixture against Juventus | OneFootball

Arsenal’s interim head coach Renée Slegers says that her side go into their UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage fixture against Juventus seeking maximum points.

The Gunners travel to Biella on Matchday 3. Both Arsenal and Juventus are tied on three points after two rounds of matches.

Both sides need a positive result to keep their hopes of topping the group alive and Arsenal’s interim boss Slegers says that the North Londoners are aiming for nothing other than the win.

“We are going there to play our best football and we have a big belief in what we can do tomorrow, looking at how we’ve been performing lately and obviously, scouting Juventus,” Slegers said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “We have a big belief in ourselves and then we’ll see how the game progresses, what decisions we have to make, but we go there to win.”

Juventus go into the game having kept four clean sheets on the spin and Slegers believes that the Italians have a very different structure to what Arsenal see week in, week out in the Barclays Women’s Super League.

She said “It’s a different kind of football than what we usually play against in the WSL. We’re expecting them to make it really hard for us in the way they defend. I think from a WSL perspective, it’s unorthodox.

“They’re a little bit more player-for-player in the way they play, so that’s a new challenge for us. We’ve tried to prepare the girls as best as possible to be able to exploit this defending system in the best way.”

Arsenal are unbeaten in four games under Slegers and she says that a positive environment has been developed around the squad in the last few weeks.

She said “As a coaching staff, we try to create an environment where players can feel confident, have the courage to do what they’re good at and feel backed up if they fail because football is also a game of failure. That’s what we try to create but ultimately, small successes could be goals, could be wins, but they could also be small things in training and build momentum off that, so that’s what we’ve tried to do.”

Arsenal’s UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage fixture against Juventus kicks-off at 5.45pm on Tuesday evening.