Aston Villa boss Arroyo hoping for revenge on London City Lionesses for Villa Park defeat | OneFootball

Aston Villa head coach Natalia Arroyo is hoping that her side can gain revenge on opponents London City Lionesses this weekend.

The Pride won the reverse fixture 3-1 at Villa Park in November as they dented Aston Villa’s excellent early-season record.

When speaking to the media ahead of this weekend’s meeting at The Copperjax Community Stadium, Aston Villa boss Arroyo said that she hopes that her side can gain revenge for that defeat.

“I hope that the players want to get revenge for that result [at Villa Park],” Arroyo said. “We are hungry, we want to win and finish the season with three points. On the other hand, we know how strong and powerful they can be. They have good individuals and are moving in the right direction as a club.

“It’s in our hands to beat them and show our ambitions. It’s about having the pride of winning after previously not being able to do that. Let’s find a good performance, be honest in our work, try our best and see if we can implement a plan where we can create more chances than them, defend properly and give them a tough last game at home.”

The game sees a battle of two Spanish coaches with Arroyo coming up against former colleague Eder Maestre who took up the role of London City Lionesses head coach back in January.

“It will be a special game because I will meet my good friend Eder in his first adventure in England,” Arroyo said. “It’ll be nice to fight against him rather than having him next to me on the bench; he was my assistant coach in Spain.

“It will be nice to see him. He knows me and I know him, so let’s see how we surprise each other. It will be nice.”

Aston Villa were excellent in the first half of the season but wins have been in short supply since the winter break. Arroyo said that the club are reviewing their second half of the season performance closely.

She said “We are reviewing and analysing everything to understand all of the reasons why we were not able to complete as strong as we did in the beginning [of the season] or win more points. Some circumstances haven’t helped like player availability and emotional things that we go through as a group.

“We knew that we needed to build and that takes time and there are ups and downs. We are not proud of that, we want be more up and not having the downs. We have shown some of the things that we have to go through and we need to invest to continue going in the right direction. 

“Everybody is putting a mirror in-front of themselves to see what we can do better.”

Aston Villa’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at London City Lionesses kicks-off at 1pm on Saturday afternoon.