Arsenal’s title aspirations took a huge blow with a 4-1 home defeat to Chelsea at Meadow Park on Sunday. Tim Stillman caught up with a despondent Joe Montemurro after the game for Arseblog News.

On the setup today…

The thought was to press a little bit higher up the pitch and to stop them playing through the middle and create overloads in the middle of the park, it didn’t work and I take full responsibility.

On whether the failings were tactical or mental…

It was tactical today.

On the potential transfer of Caitlin Foord…

We are negotiating with Caitlin, hopefully things will be done quickly now, but I don’t want to speculate yet on things that aren’t done.

On the decision to leave Lisa Evans on the bench…

We decided not to play with a lot of width and instead go for inside to outside movement and it didn’t work.

On the defending for the Chelsea goals…

It’s difficult to sit back and watch a team so powerful putting us under a lot of pressure and creating chances, but the most disappointing thing was that we couldn’t get the ball down and play. We couldn’t string passes together and that’s the first time I’ve seen that in my two-and-a-bit years here.

On the preparation for the game…

I can’t say we prepared correctly, the plan didn’t work and I have to take responsibility for that.

On bouncing back from defeat…

This is an amazing team with an amazing bunch of players, they’re allowed a slip-up every once in a while they are allowed to make mistakes, historically this team has always bounced back and responded well to disappointment.

On creating more chances in the second half…

We exposed them a bit more, but at 3 or 4-0 it’s not the same, Chelsea are just looking to see the game out, so it’s a little bit false to say we created more chances.

On a 4,000 sellout crowd at Meadow Park…

That’s great and the game is coming on in leaps and bounds and we’re happy to see so many people here today and we hope to see it again.

On what kind of influence the result will have on the title race…

I don’t know, it’s difficult to say. There’s a lot of football to play and we can’t predict the future.

On picking the players up…

We review, we look at what went wrong and we get the energy levels up and we get the frame of mind right and we keep going. This team is resilient and won’t give up. It’s a setback, probably the biggest we’ve had since I’ve been here.