Player news was first on the agenda in Jonas Eidevall’s press conference, with defender Jen Beattie speaking to the Gooner about Leah Williamson’s ACL injury. Arsenal will be without their captain Kim Little for the rest of the season, but Little has travelled to Wolfsburg to support her teammates.

Looking at the cause of Williamson’s injury, Eidevall reaffirmed that he “didn’t think the pitch was perfect, but I think an injury like that is multifaceted of course. It’s a combination of load, physically, mentally and luck in that moment, and we knew we can never know fully why you got into that position with the knee”.

“We can see that there is more competitive games, there is more intensity than there’s ever been before and we know that that’s a development that is only going to increase. We as a club, we need to look at the factors that we can control… we’re not just sticking our heads in the sand and blaming just external factors”.

Eidevall confirmed that Arsenal will be without both Caitlin Foord and Lina Hurtig for the first leg of the semi final, with neither travelling to Lower Saxony. He hopes that “both will be available for the return leg”.

Jonas was in Wolfsburg last weekend to watch their DFB Pokal semi final win against Bayern Munich, so the Gooner asked him about just how impressed he was with their display. “They were very good in that game, against a good Bayern Munich team. Like I said, when their attackers use their speed and their power they have some excellent quality up there so I think that game very much played into their strengths as a team, so of course it’s up to us to play a game like that that plays into our strengths”.

Analysing Wolfsburg’s particular attacking strengths, Eidevall told the media that Wolfsburg have “A lot of power, a lot of speed. A lot of individual qualities that are very different from each other, with the player types that they have. It gives them variety in the way that they attack, but it also of course gives them different options also from the bench in order to change or try and use different defensive tools”.

“It’s definitely one of the best attacks in Europe so it will be a tough challenge for us”.

The Gooner will be at the Volkswagen Arena this afternoon, with a live blog, player ratings and post match reaction from Jonas Eidevall all to follow.