For Alessia Russo, the winter break couldn’t have come at a worse time.
The 25-year-old is one of the most in-form strikers in Europe right now and another goal in Wednesday’s 3-2 comeback win against Bayern Munich was her sixth in just four games during December.
It is fair to say Russo is flourishing under the guidance of Arsenal interim boss Renee Slegers.
Her neat backpost finish against Bayern took her tally to 11 goals for the season, 10 of which have been scored under Slegers, who has been in charge since Jonas Eidevall resigned as coach in October.
It took the Lionesses star some time to get off the mark in the WSL, but a change in management and, in turn, style of play has proved the catalyst to the best run of scoring in her career to date.
“As strikers you always have moments and spells. It’s about riding the wave and when things aren’t good it’s stripping it back, focusing on training and that’s what I have done,” Russo told DAZN after the game.
“I’m my own biggest critic and I know at times I have definitely not scored as much as I want to.
“We’re playing really nice football and we are picking up really important results. We are really enjoying ourselves and finding so many different connections on the pitch and often grinding out results in different kinds of ways,” she added.
“We’ve been working on lots of different things, but in the final third how we can find different connections, how we can create different types of attacks. It starts in training and we have been lucky enough to find it in matches too.
“It’s been great and us as players want more, we want to take accountability and that’s what we’re doing.”
Arsenal and Russo head into the winter break full of confidence, eagerly awaiting the Champions League quarter-final draw on 7 February.
“We’re all feeling really positive as a group,” Russo said. “We have just been working really hard. I know it sounds cliche but we really have. With the players and staff we have got, I would always back us.”
