Jonas Eidevall felt his players “believed 100% that we can turn that game around” in their comeback win over Manchester City at the Joie Stadium.
Arsenal went a goal down thanks to Lauren Hemp’s finish, but turned the game on its head late on thanks to a Stina Blackstenius brace from the bench.
Eidevall said: “We got braver, we got more offensive-minded as longer as the game went.”
“And I loved the character of them with being like, let’s go for it when we tie the game. Not being happy with that, we know that wasn’t going to change anything for our league position.
“The only thing that could change our league position was a win. I think the players’ mentality was unbelievably good today.”
With Blackstenius’ contract up for renewal come the summer, Eidevall said: “I’m sitting here after a great win and a great goal from her, and being as boring as ever with saying that when we have something concrete to communicate, we will do that regarding our extensions with Stina or with any other players with expiring contract.”
Having done the double over Manchester City in the WSL, Eidevall reflected on the two wins over Gareth Taylor’s side.
“What I’m really happy about with the performance is that you can find a way to win against City and we showed that in the game, for example, early in the league at home. But if you characterise that as a performance, there is a lot of things there where we sort of maybe is forced to change the way we play due to the opponent. Today, I feel it’s the other way around.
“I feel that we can really enforce our way of playing. I think we can be really comfortable with the ball, giving our structure and the quality the players have to playing out of their pressure. I felt like that going into the 85th minute here to say, if we don’t win today, at least we can look at ourselves in the mirror and say, we’re acting like the team we want to be.
“We’re acting like the team we’re speaking about being. And that’s always the starting point to being successful. And then, of course, it’s much nicer when you score a 2-1 goal in overtime. But in reality, it doesn’t change the 91 minutes before that moment. It doesn’t. But it is those 91 minutes that creates the belief that the players show and gives the goal.
“So I think from a performance perspective, it’s so big difference in what we did today than what we did early autumn.”