Following Laura Wienroither’s injury on Wednesday night, Jonas Eidevall spoke to the media about the defender becoming the latest victim of the ACL epidemic sweeping both Arsenal and the women’s game.

Discussing Wienroither herself, Eidevall labelled the situation as “a tragedy for the player and for us as a team, so we’re very disappointed and sad with the news. It doesnt change the way that we were looking at the [ACL] situation, we just need to continue to do that and as always look to find things to improve for the future but also to give the absolute best possible medical help to Laura so she can return to play as safely and as quickly as possible.”

“Most important is that the player feels supported when they are at Arsenal in that we give them full medical and mental support… I think a lot of the time with long term injuries it’s about continuing to give them that support within the whole period of time, not only the first days but to feel cared and supported by the whole recovery team for that whole period of time, and our medical team is doing a fantastic job with her.”

With Wienroither’s injury following similar ACL problems suffered by Beth Mead, Vivianne Miedema and more recently Leah Williuamson, Eidevall was quizzed on why Arsenal have had such a significant issue with this type of injury. “Like I said, that’s what we need to look into, obviously, and I’m afraid that there is not just one single answer on that- it’s a multifaceted injury and we need to look at the complete picture to see what factors in this we can control; what can we learn and what can we do better. Of course, we need to look at that internally and hopefully we will be better in the future.”

“I think some parts of it is of course internal, and things that we can control, and then there are things that we need that external cooperation with, for example the playing schedule for the cooperation between clubs and national team, or how and when the competitions are played and how the international, match calendar is done. That requires governing bodies, football associations, clubs and national teams working together so there are bits that I think clubs can solve themselves internally but there are also a lot of things that require the whole world of football to cooperate, so we need to do both.”

Arsenal have worked to review what they can do to try and prevent these types of injuries, and will continue to do so according to their head coach. “We’ve done it the last three years, so this is an ongoing process where we are constantly reviewing our injuries and benchmarking that compared to how many injuries and what types of injuries, compared to match hours and training hours and so on, and of course to learn fro that to see how we are performing compared to our competitors, so nothing of that changes, we will continue to do that and that reflection is making us better for the future, I’m sure.”

Wienroither is set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines, and will miss this summer’s World Cup as well as the remainder of the current Women’s Super League season.