Montemurro worried about Little and Roord lasting 90 minutes against Chelsea

With the massive game against Chelsea coming up tomorrow, Joe Montemurro will be happy that he has got quite a few of Arsenal’s injured players back in his squad, but not all of them are back to full fitness.

Two of Montemurro’s very best players are Jill Roord and Kim Little, and their technical skills were missed in the loss against Man United last week, although they both came on as subs, but the coach is still not sure if they are ready to play a full 90 minutes against Chelsea.

Montemurro told Arseblog: “I suppose it is a disappointing comment, from my perspective that you say that we struggled technically (against United), because that’s our forte. You have every right to say that, because that was one of the major problems on Sunday.

“Absolutely, our game is based around having the ball and being proactive with the ball. That’s why they’ve been recruited and we’ve missed their detail over the last three, four weeks, albeit the results have been largely positive. But the reality is that the mistakes you make during the game you can’t make against a United, City, or a Chelsea. So, we know they’re going to be crucial for the game.

“We just have to assess whether they have 90 minutes and what they have in them at the moment, because I have to question whether they’re able to play the full 90 minutes and especially in a game that’s going to be at a high tempo. So we have to be careful a) for the game coming up, but b) also for our planning. Because we don’t want to put them at risk in a way that could be a detrimental for the rest of the season, because there’s still a long, long way to go.”

That sounds like Montemurro is going to be cautious with them tomorrow, but hopefully they can come on later in the game if we find ourselves struggling.

Fingers crossed we can beat the Blues without risking their fitness too much…

Tags Chelsea women Jill Roord Kim Little WSL
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