Renee Slegers expects "both [clubs] will feel" the fire of the rivalry between Arsenal and Tottenham as the two clubs kick off at 12:30 GMT on Sunday afternoon at the Emirates Stadium in the WSL.
Arsenal have won six of their last seven games in the league. Of those six victories, five have featured at least three goals. The Gunners are in red hot form, but derby day is never an occasion to disrespect.
There are more than bragging rights on the line. The hosts are third in the table— two points ahead of Man City and three behind Man United. They cannot ease up in the race for the top three to secure Champions League qualification. Slegers shared her plans for this crucial contest with the press.
Connection with the crowd is going to help us’
Slegers seeks to hit the right pitch in her preparations. She wants to make the most of the energy around the rivalry without losing sight of a professional approach to the much-needed three points.
“I think we have to find the right balance of we know we're going to play a very important game with rivalry, and a lot of people invested in the stadium as well.”
“But at the same time, we also have to level that with the girls just need to focus on the task and the role they need to play on the pitch to be able to bring the best out of themselves. But like I said before, the connection with the crowd is going to help us lift our game.”
The derby will take place at the Emirates Stadium, with over 55,000 tickets sold to spectators, and on Valentine's Day, the 36-year-old shared a few words of love for the fans ahead of this game.
“I feel connected to them and hopefully they feel connected to us and what we try to bring who we are as players, who we who we are as people, that they can relate to that and that brings them something in life, and that that can be inspiring, because the other way around, they're inspiring for us as well.”
“We always feel very supported by the fans because we sell out away sections as well and it gives us something more. We really want to connect with them, because they give us that extra little percentage on the pitch and we're also very aware that people invest a lot of time and effort to come and see us and support us, so we really want to bring something good back to them as well on Sunday.”
I think it’s been a great week’
A high octane atmosphere could lead to a fast start for the Gunners. The manager cannot call if an early goal will come or not, like against Man City, but it is an element she factors into her plans.
“We just think it's important that we set ourselves up really well in games, and it already starts in the warm-up. So that's definitely something we've been talking about. And sometimes you have to be lucky as well that actually you get the rewards straight away, because I think we always try to do really hard work at the start of the game, and then sometimes the rewards come and sometimes they won’t.”
With a full free week in the schedule, there has been some tailoring to the prep for this fixture.
“We love to play games and we had weeks full of games where we only had one, two or three training sessions in between, so we are really happy with the seven day turnaround so we can work on the details, develop our game model, but also part of it was to make really good individual modifications in the week so some players needed to push and get more, and other players needed to get less.”
“I think it’s been a great week and credit to the performance team and tech staff for working together and getting the right load onto the players in the last week.”