Eleven games. It starts at eleven. Ten goals.
Alessia Russo is reaping the rewards of her hard work under Arsenal interim manager Renee Slegers, with her excellent form continuing in the Gunners’ final game before the winter break.
The 25-year-old scored his second goal for Arsenal on Wednesday Back 3-2 against Bayern Munich, who secured first place in the Women’s Champions League group.
Thanks to this, Russo scored 11 goals in the season, 10 of which she scored under Slegers, and six in the last four matches.
“I am my own biggest critic and I know that at times I definitely haven’t scored as many goals as I would have liked,” Russo told DAZN after the match.
“As strikers you always have moments and spells. It’s about riding the wave and when things aren’t going well, shake it off and focus on training, and that’s what I did.”
England international Russo started every match under Slegers in charge after Jonas Eidevall resigned as head coach in October.
Under the Swede’s leadership, Russo started seven of nine matches at the beginning of the season, scoring only one goal.
“I’m just enjoying playing football,” Russo said. “We are playing really nice football and getting really important results. We’re really having fun, finding a lot of different connections on the pitch and often getting results in different ways.
“We worked on a lot of different things, but in the last third we can find different connections, how we can create different types of attacks. It starts in training and we were lucky to find that in games as well.
“It was great and we as players want more, we want to take responsibility and that’s what we’re doing.”
Arsenal and Russo head into the winter break full of confidence, looking forward to the Champions League quarter-final draw on February 7.
“We are all very positive as a group,” Russo said. “We just worked really hard. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true. With the players and staff we have, I will always support us.”
