For the past two weeks the Manchester United manager, Casey Stoney, and her Arsenal counterpart, Joe Montemurro, have shared the same frustration as they have had to sit back and watch as Manchester City and Chelsea progressed to the quarter-finals of the Champions Leagues.
It is a competition Arsenal, as the only English team to have won it, know well and are determined to be back into. United, who travel to Borehamwood on Friday night, pose the biggest threat to that. Unless either Chelsea or City collapse only one of these teams will get to play in next season’s competition.
Friday’s game is huge. Arenal are fourth in the league and six points behind United but have a game in hand. Win on Friday and win their game in hand and they are level on points. Lose or drop points and United could well be out of reach.
Montemurro, however, chuckled when he was asked what it is like watching the competition from the sofa. “You sit there, obviously you want to be at that level and in those scenarios,” he says. “They’re doing well, they’re representing the country very well, playing very very well.”
Stoney is similarly diplomatic: “Chelsea and Man City are doing the WSL justice at the minute,” she says. “They have had some really good performances and positive results, but when we watch those games you have that feeling of wanting to be there and wanting to experience it.”
Qualifying for the Champions League would put United “ahead of schedule” Stoney added. The team that was relaunched in 2018 won the Championship promotion in their first season, finished fourth in a curtailed second season last year (their first in the top flight) and now vies with Arsenal for a place in the Champions League.
It is a testament to the manager, and the performances of her team, that failing to qualify would now feel like the club had fallen short. “I would never say my players had failed because they give 100% effort all the time,” Stoney says, “but for me as a head coach, I would see that as a failure.”
There is pressure, but with United still in their infancy there is less pressure. For Arsenal, the most decorated club in English women’s football history, there is more of an expectation of success.
“As the coach I have to take responsibility,” Montemurro says. “I send the team out and select the staff and set the targets. Not reaching them I have to take full responsibility for. At Arsenal we demand being at the highest level. I don’t know if failure is the right word, there are a lot of good things we have done in terms of stabilising the scenario. I’m not a hit and leave coach, I am a process coach and we have done a lot of good things in the background to stabilise ourselves for years to come.”
In the last meeting between the two teams an 83rd minute goal from the United forward Ella Toone gave the home side a first win against the Gunners. It was a turning point, United had not beaten any of the traditional top three in the league. A 1-1 draw with Chelsea in their season opener had shown they could compete but the the win against Arsenal demonstrated they could be clinical when it mattered.
Positive results against City, Chelsea and Arsenal have helped put the Champions League in their own hands and given them confidence. However defeat to Reading in February was a warning that, with five games still to play after their trip to face Arsenal, they must not put too much into this one tie.
“It is more than doable how the season has gone so far, but this last push is going to be really important to secure that top three,” says Stoney.
Arsenal have an incredible record against teams outside the new top four, having not lost since a 3-0 defeat to Birmingham in April 2018. But United’s loss to Reading and Chelsea’s shock defeat by Brighton have shown there are no guaranteed wins in the league any more.
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“I was discussing this with the squad last week,” Montemurro says. “So this run home is not just hinged on tomorrow [Friday] night, there’s a lot of games still to play, a lot of teams that could potentially unlock us and that’s why my focus in my tenure here has been to make sure that if anyone is going to beat us its going to be teams that are at our level or fighting with us. Sustainability and consistency in a league that is so short is critical and crucial.”
Will there be an element of revenge though fuelling things on Friday night? “I don’t know if it’s revenge but there’s a real positivity [in the group] at the moment,” Muntemurro says. “We knew we let ourselves down, technically and tactically, silly errors and mistakes in [the last game]. We should have come away with something. We know we let ourselves down and the club down that day. Now we want to make sure we keep Borehamwood as a fortress and keep winning games there.”
from Football | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3s1ppLr
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