“I’m fully convinced the club will be a big club in the near-future” – Jocelyn Prêcheur believes Lionesses are on the right path | OneFootball

Prêcheur’s first reaction to his side’s loss was, “Obviously I’m disappointed at this moment and even more when I see how we started this game. I really liked the first 20 minutes of the first half. The organisation was good. The intensity increased. It started to become harder for us.”

“We have the capacity to adapt to the WSL. Fortunately, we recruited some players who know what this intensity is. Now we just need to create a team. I have a lot of a job to do to create cohesion. Many of the players only started a week ago.”

Playing a season opener in a packed Emirates Stadium, unsurprisingly can be quite daunting. “I was a little afraid at the beginning, especially for our young players in the WSL for the first time. But they were able to forget this environment. We asked them to stay focused on the pitch and their role. From that point, I am pretty satisfied. We played Arsenal, the champions of Europe, so of course we expected a tough game. But I think we are able to do better than this.”

“With the leader I have with Michele [Kang] we know where we want to go. We are talking about the WSL, the toughest league in the world, even if we are ambitious we know it will be tough and cannot be done in just one week. I’m fully convinced the club will be a big club in the near-future but we are talking about Arsenal, they have just won the Champions League. How much time we need, I cannot tell you. We missed a few of the new signings this afternoon. We need to give time to adapt in a new country and a new league for lots of them. We will have a tough beginning but as soon as we start to adapt, I am optimistic and I think we can reduce the gap we saw today between us and Arsenal.”

“In the second half we were not able to build anything. The way Arsenal defended and how their press was something we analysed before. We fell into the trap and did not have the capacity to keep the ball. One of the key points in this game was our capacity to switch play. We did it very well in the first 20-25 minutes. But I think we didn’t do it more in the second half. I need to talk to the players to find out why we went far away from this. We have the technical capacity to fight against this team.”