Arsenal boss Jonas Eidevall has admitted that he would have liked to have done more transfer business this summer. The Gunners came second in last season's Women's Super League by one point and were hopeful of kickstarting their title challenge this season by being active in the transfer market.
However, most of the club's activity came in the outgoing department with Nikita Parris, Lisa Evans, Lydia Williams, Simone Boye, Viki Schnaderbeck and Tobin Heath all leaving permanently, while Anna Patten joined Aston Villa on loan. Arsenal were able to bring in goalkeeper Kaylan Mackerse and forward Lina Hurtig, while Brazilian youngster Gio Queiroz joined from Barcelona before being immediately sent out on loan to Everton, but Eidevall has revealed that he wanted to bring in at least one more player before the window came to a close.
"I am going to be very honest, ideally I would have liked one more player," the Swedish coach said in his pre-match press conference ahead of Arsenal's WSL curtain raiser against Brighton on Friday. "When you do transfers it is always like this, there are so many reasons why things can’t go through. Our preference was that if we couldn’t find the perfect fit in this window, we would rather wait and do it in the next window.
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"But it’s not really more than one player [I wanted]. When you see the list of players in and out with Arsenal it is very skewed compared to other clubs. In January, we brought in three players and didn’t release any because of the Asia Cup at that time, so that meant we carried a very big squad during the spring which was a couple of players too large to accommodate.
"It was natural that there were going to be more players out than in and it was more important to keep the key players for us so we can keep building consistency and culture with them. One more player would have been ideal but that will have to be in January."
Arsenal get their campaign underway on Friday night in what will be a curtain raiser for the entire WSL season after last week's round of fixtures were postponed following the passing of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. Despite the change in schedule Eidevall believes his team's experience of coping with changeable schedules will stand them in good stead for the disruption.
"I think you have a football world that was pre-COVID and post COVID, and COVID has taught us a lot about being flexible and that things can change very quickly," the Swede said. "We have a professional squad who can adapt to these situations and we prefer to not to spend energy on things we can’t control."
The delay has actually proved to be a boost for Arsenal as they will have two more first team players available. Eidevall confirmed that both Steph Cately and Caitlin would now be available for Brighton after some earlier fitness concerns ahead of last week's originally scheduled season-opener at Manchester City.
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