Robert Vilahamn spoke to the media at Hotspur Way ahead of our Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Arsenal at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday afternoon (1.45pm UK).

Here’s what he had to say…

First up, Robert was asked about the latest team news ahead of the fixture…

Robert “Amanda [Nilden] is back for tomorrow, which is really good news. Basically the only two players who are not available are Kit [Graham] and Maite [Oroz], so everyone else is able to be in the squad.”

Robert was asked about what this derby means to supporters and last season’s success in this fixture at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium…

Robert: “Moving from Sweden to north London, you realise how big this game is when you were part of the game last season, especially for our fans. It’s coming from the Men’s team as well, having this big game in north London, and to make sure we make it Lilywhite. We know how much it means, we saw last season how much it felt, for the fans and everyone. This time there will be even more fans and it will be good to have that again as that’s what it’s all about – the passion of beating your local opponent.”

Robert was asked about the change of management for Arsenal in recent weeks and the impact Slegers has brought to the Club so far…

Robert: “I think it’s not too big of a difference. In Sweden, they were together at Rosengard and were obviously working together and, then when Jonas left, I went to Pro License with her for two years and competed with her when she was at Rosengard, so I know her well. She’s a top, top quality coach and you can tell that they play some good football now and are winning games with great goals as well, so it’s going to be a very tough game. On the other hand, we also know that they struggled in some parts of the games and we know that when we are good, we can actually beat all the teams in this league. We must make sure we go for it; we make sure we do everything we can to as it’s our home Stadium and we know that we can beat them.”

The following question was what he learnt about Slegers when doing their UEFA Pro Licence together…

Robert: “I really like her as a person, she’s a good person, with great knowledge and is a great former footballer as well. Then you see her as a coach at Rosengard, she made the best out of the team and how they performed, now you see she also made this Arsenal team look good, so then you obviously know that she’s a talented coach and a good person. I only have good stuff to say about her because I like her as a person and as a coach.”

Robert was then asked about what improvements were made after last week’s defeat to Manchester City…

Robert: “I mean, if you look at the start of the last game, it was obviously a tough one because all of a sudden mentally you need to rethink the game structure and the plan we had. Also, when you play at that stadium with that start, you lose a little bit of the self-confidence. I trust the players, I think they’re great players, sometimes you do mistakes and, for me, to just change the starting eleven, I’m not that kind of a coach. Now we have a few players back, so we have good competition for this game, we have a really strong squad, but it comes down to make sure we don’t do serious mistakes because, when you do, the top teams are too good and we lose those games. We need to reduce the mistakes, still be brave but also be sharper in the final third because we had a few good moments in the first half against Man City where we could have actually got ourselves back in the game, but we didn’t end up finishing in a good way. It’s a mixture of everything. Look, we have a run of stuff where we’re doing good stuff and some more poor stuff, but tomorrow we’re going to try to make sure we reduce those mistakes, but still brave and play attacking football.”

Robert was posed with the question, ‘how different is it managing expectations of an opponent who are in more of an inconsistent form?’

Robert: “Even if they have had some ups and downs result-wise, they’ve been quite good in the games, they’ve been competing and, in the last two games, they’ve had 5-0 and 4-0 against quite good opponents, so I actually expect them to look very good because they’ve some really good structure. Obviously, we played three times against them last season and I actually think we had three good games against them, we drew one, we won one and lost, but it was 1-0 at the Emirates, so we know that we can handle their players. I know that when we’re having a good day, we’re really good, so I’m not thinking that we can have an easy game tomorrow, I’m actually thinking I’m going to have a really tough game, but I want that because it’s a top team opponent, we want to practice that to make sure we get to the level where we should be dictating games against them.”

Robert was asked about the mood in the camp following a tough run of fixtures…

Robert: “I mean, results-wise, they’re not good results and the feelings are connected to how you perform results-wise, so I can sit here every week and say ‘we play good football, we have developed’ but, of course, it’s not the easiest every time to just have great energy. However, that’s what’s so good with this squad, the staff and everybody around, we are very upset after games, we have some good talks and then we get back two days after to have a reflection. We have some really good discussions but, from that, we try to find some really good ways forward and how we can improve. Then, we go out on the training field, the energy and the happiness is back again, we fight really well and you have this strong belief that the next game should be a success. You need to have it every week, no matter if you win or lose, because it’s always a new game and your chance to be better and win games. But, you know, we have a sports psychologist, we have a strong, experienced team, we have players with leadership roles… everybody’s helping out to make sure we don’t just feel like everything is bad. So, you would be surprised if you had been around us this week because the group has been amazing and I’m really impressed by that.”