Arsenal went back to the top of the WSL with a 3-0 away win at Reading thanks to goals from Kim Little and a brace from Vivianne Miedema. Tim Stillman caught up with Gunners boss Joe Montemurro after the game exclusively for Arseblog News.

On the performance…

Every time we come here it’s difficult, this is a team that doesn’t give you any time to rest on the ball. The goals came at the right times for us and we had to adapt a bit today, we had to play a bit un-Arsenal and be a bit more direct. But we came here to get the points and that was the most important thing.

On Kim Little’s wonder goal for 2-0…

You guys are the ones that pick the goal of the season, I don’t pick those things. Every week there’s a goal of the season, but this one is a credit to the team because we work a lot on set plays, we work a lot on corners and free-kicks and this was worked from a corner and they got into a goalscoring position and that’s what we work at a lot.

? “Playing football the Arsenal way!” ? Simply world class from #CaptainLittle ? pic.twitter.com/VtxJ20T1xK — Arsenal Women (@ArsenalWFC) December 8, 2019

On Viki Schnaderbeck playing at left-back…

Katie (McCabe) isn’t quite ready yet and we need to give Mitch some more minutes to get her into the rhythm before she can start. But the idea was to overload on one side and have a more defensive full-back on the left so we could drag Reading to one side and find space that way. That’s exactly how the first goal came about, we opened up some space on the right which was great.

On Reading playing a high pressing game…

We were prepared for that, we know they press quite high. We weren’t smart enough in the first half in going beyond the press a little bit earlier or making the distances a little bit longer, we were a little bit short with the distances and they probably should have gone 1-0 up when they stole the ball at the start.

On leaving the team in the hands of Leanne Hall and Aaron D’Antino while Joe returns to Australia for personal reasons…

No worries at all, Aaron and Leanne will do the match days but we have such a lot of great staff here, from Rose, Gary, to Fran and Owen, they’re all fantastic and we’re prepared for next week’s game, which is a massive one for us at Everton.

Joe Montemurro won’t be in the dugout for upcoming games against London Bees and Everton, he’ll return to Australia for personal reasons. The team will be taken by @LeannehallSGK and @ABDAntino. My understanding is that Joe will take the game tomorrow. — Tim Stillman (@Stillberto) December 7, 2019

On Reading not allowing Arsenal to control the second half…

It was messy from our perspective, it got messy. But when a team plays long, early and the distances get long, it’s hard to get the ball down and play. They didn’t allow us to do that, they pretty much bypassed our midfield every time. We can’t always play the football that we want to play, we have to be logical and realistic coming to places like this, these are good teams and the games are hard. They didn’t allow us to play but we had to adapt and we did that well.

On keeping a clean sheet…

I don’t think Reading had many opportunities, they had that one in the first half when Manu makes a brilliant save. There were lots of crosses and lots of corners, but nothing centrally and we were quite happy to defend the crosses.