Arsenal Women boss Jonas Eidevall insists he is his own “fiercest critic” and that no one puts more pressure on him than himself.
Eidevall has come under fire after the Gunners were held to a 0-0 draw at home to Everton last week and slumped to a 5-2 loss at Bayern Munich on Wednesday.
Arsenal now face a big game against reigning Women’s Super League (WSL) champions Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday and the pressure is on Eidevall to secure a positive result.
The Swede, however, insists nothing compares to the pressure he puts on himself and has stressed it is necessary to work in such an environment.
“It is hard for me to sort of say [anything] to critics because I don’t necessarily know what they are criticising,” said Eidevall. “But, as I said before, I think the most pressure comes from ourselves.
“If I talk about me personally, I set incredibly high standards on myself and I think I am going to be by far my fiercest critic of my performances and the team’s performances.
“Pressure is not only a privilege, I believe it is a necessity if you are going to find high performance in football.
“And, if you want to be competing in all four competitions, you need to be able to handle and deal with pressure and making sure that pressure gets the best version out of you.
“So I don’t mind that. That’s part of the game and part of the privilege in representing this football club.”
Arsenal have taken five points from their opening three WSL games this season and sit sixth in the table.
Their only win in the league so far was a 1-0 victory over Leicester and that has added to the scrutiny on Eidevall.
But the Arsenal boss said: “I think you can look at things from different perspectives, of course.
“The main objective for us in this pre-season, at the start of the season, was to qualify for the Champions League group stage. We have done that.
“We want to be competing all the way in the league and there is no way you can tell me that the start to the league doesn’t allow us to do that.
“And yes, we are disappointed with the start to the group stage in the Champions League, and yes our ambition is to go through and go to the quarter-final stage - there is five games left.
“We need to put our focus to what we have in front of us and we still have all the possibilities open to us. But as I said, we need to learn, we need to progress and, of course, we need to perform every single time we play.”
