Last weekend, Arsenal Women rebounded from a 3-1 London derby WSL loss to Chelsea with a 3-1 victory over Aston Villa.
Arsenal Women now have this whole week to focus on one thing: how they will beat Chelsea on Sunday 31st March, to retain the Continental Cup that our Gunners won last year, by beating Chelsea 3-1.
For those who watched the Villa victory, the admission was that if our Gunners perform like they did in the first half of their clash with Villa, they will not stand a chance of beating Chelsea.
However, if they perform like they did in the second half (of the Villa win), they have a bright chance of defeating Chelsea.
That being said, the hope is that our Gunner women will bring their A-game to the Women’s Conti Cup Final.
The North London Derby loss must motivate them to perform at their best. Notably, Beth Mead recently spoke with Sky Sports about Chelsea, discussing how their loss to them affected them and how they plan to make it right and retain the Continental Cup this weekend.
In a sit-down with Sky Sports Mead had a lot to say about the 3-1 London derby loss:
“Arguably, when we look in the mirror, we will probably say it was one of our worst performances all season against a very, very good Chelsea side. A lot of us have had a few sleepless nights thinking about it. People think we just move on, but it’s difficult, especially in the manner that we lost.
“We’ve had a lot of long meetings throughout this week. We’ve dissected what we thought went wrong, individually and mentally, what we thought we could have done better. Ultimately, now we’ve got to grow, and we’ve got to learn from that performance and the mistakes that we made and be better. We’ve got a big game against Chelsea again coming up.
“In the losses, sometimes you can learn a lot more than you can in the wins. We’ve got to take that from this now, and we can’t change that, but we can change what happens in the future.”
On the Continental Cup win last year, beating Chelsea in the Final “Yes, we did that to them earlier on last year, and they’ve done it back to us. It’s a Cup final, so there’s no more motivation than going to win a trophy, but against Chelsea and wanting to rectify what happened Friday is obviously another big motivation as a team.”
On facing a different Chelsea than the one they beat in the Continental Cup last season, “Yes, I think it’s in the past. I think it’s a new look—teams on both sides, different personnel, different players. We, of course, want to retain the Conti Cup. That’s our main aim. We want to win the game. Obviously, it’s Chelsea again, a very good team, so hopefully it’ll be a good game for people to watch.”
Are you confident in Arsenal’s chances of successfully defending the Continental Cup? And does Beth Mead fill you with confidence?
COYGW!
Michelle Maxwell
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Forget about the loss at the Bridge, we got to get the Starting selection right with Russo leading the line this time around.
yes Beth Mead is our best player, historically and potentially, imho, b/c she has the skill to get round defenders and shoot at the unguarded end of the goal, as an additional benefit she can backtrack and rob the opposition of the ball, like no one else … she s got the value of experience, hindsight and some missed opportunities, so yes she fills me with confidence that she s going to be on fire in the final to make things right