Arsenal must find the solutions against Aston Villa says Slegers | OneFootball

Arsenal head coach Renée Slegers says that her side must find solutions to overcome an aggressive Aston Villa outfit this weekend.

The Gunners play host to The Villans at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Arsenal suffered a 5-2 defeat to Aston Villa when the two sides met at Villa Park at the end of last season. When speaking to the media ahead of the latest meeting, Arsenal boss Slegers said that her side must take the learnings from that game and find solutions this time around.

“I think a lot of learnings from our game last year,” Slegers said. “They have certain strengths in the team, they have a strong belief in how they play and if they will do what we expect them to do, they will be very aggressive against us, so we will have to find a way to find the solutions.

“It will be a tough task, it will ask a lot from us. From a presence perspective, are we technically present, are we psychologically present in the game, because we expect to be under pressure and we expect to have to find solutions on Saturday.”

Aston Villa will again provide Arsenal with a potential banana skin but Slegers says that one game isn’t more important than another and that consistency is the aim.

She said “I know it’s very important [not to slip up], but it doesn’t make a difference. We knew that going into this season, we want to be consistently consistent and we want to find ways. We need to bring that in every single game, so that’s no different but we know that we’ll have to bring that on Saturday.

“We respect Aston Villa. Of course, we played a hard game away last year against Villa, so we know that we need to be on our best on Saturday.”

Going on to discuss fixtures more broadly, Slegers said that Arsenal are planning on a block-to-block basis with the focus being on now up until the October international window.

She said “Block-to-block is the way we work. Of course, you have season planning but block-to-block; we look at what’s ahead of us this block, what’s the type of opposition, what does the schedule look like, how is player availability, all these things, there’s a lot going into it.

“We’ve played three competitive games, the season is going to be very long, which is why you want a good and strong competitive squad at Arsenal.”

Arsenal’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Aston Villa kicks-off at 12pm on Saturday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.