After Arsenal Women moved level on points with Chelsea at the top of the Women’s Super League, head coach Jonas Eidevall praised what he deemed his side’s best performance of the season so far.

“What I was really pleased about especially in the first half is that we had a good mixture of being able to create goalscoring opportunities but also put our foot on the ball and manage,” said Eidevall.

“I think the way we managed the ball against Chelsea- I haven’t seen any team apart from Barcelona doing that, that well against them for such long spells in the game so that was really really pleasing.”

Asked where the result left Arsenal in the WSL title race, Eidevall said: “In football if we want to win things we need to be consistent with the performances, so it’s great that we are high, but now it becomes ‘what’s your baseline?’, ‘what’s your standard we are playing?’ This is always the hard thing in football- now we need to recover, refresh, both mentally, physically, we need to do better on Wednesday again.

“I think what is telling me when you see the reaction is yes, we are happy today, but at the end of the day our finishing position in the league, that's what is going to matter. Nothing has been won or lost today in that regard.”

After Arsenal broke their own WSL attendance record once again, with 58,042 spectators at Emirates Stadium, Eidevall commented on the impact made by the supporters: “I think there was a real clear synergy between the team and the crowd today. I think the crowd started off great but so did the team, and that took it to new heights. And I think you could see that momentum that when we scored 2-1 we scored 3-1 very closely after that. That’s something where I think it really helps with the crowd.

“You see players interacting a lot with the crowd, getting the energy levels higher. If you compare that to two-and-a-half seasons ago, those things happen much more frequently and that’s so good for our performance and for the atmosphere. We need to keep on pushing and having more experiences like this.”

Another @BarclaysWSL RECORD attendance here at the Emirates! ??? pic.twitter.com/lgl6aq02a5

— Freddie Cardy (@CardyFreddie) December 10, 2023

Chelsea manager Emma Hayes had this to say in her post-match presser: “That’s as bad as I’ve seen us play for a long time… the better team won by a country mile. They bullied us, they dominated the duels. All phases of our play were poor.”

“That’s not our best today. In fact, that’s probably our very worst,” said the Chelsea boss, who believed that Alessia Russo’s first goal was offside. Hayes said she did not disagree with the decision to award Russo a penalty for a foul by Ann-Katrin Berger.

Chelsea star Lauren James was seen kicking out at Lia Walti moments after fouling Steph Catley. Eidevall said “I saw it, but I don’t think that I can really comment on it.” Hayes said that she did not see the incident.

Eidevall added “I think that we had six yellow cards and [Chelsea] get one yellow card in the game. It’s very even from a foul perspective. It is what it is.”