Arsenal Women beat London Bees 9-0 in the Conti Cup on Wednesday evening to confirm first place in their group and qualify for the quarter-finals. Tim Stillman spoke to hat trick hero Katie McCabe after the game exclusively for Arseblog News.

On returning to the team with a hat trick…

The injury was nothing big, it was just a niggly one and I got ill on top of that, so it was quite frustrating, but I only missed the one game, really. I was buzzing to get back and delighted with how the team performed tonight.

We had some young kids in the team tonight in Ruby and Mel and they did great as well. We gave some of our old veterans a rest tonight to be ready for Sunday!

On only losing one match at Meadow Park in 2019…

We want to make a statement every time we play here, it’s a great park to play on and we can really play our football here and we do really well. The 11-1 against Bristol was a real standout this year, the one game I missed out on!

We want to make it hard for teams to come here and play us. It’s annoying that we lost that one game to Chelsea in January, but we want to keep making it difficult for teams at Meadow Park.

On not having Joe Montemurro around in training this week…

We do miss his big smiley face and his presence around the training ground, but Aaron (D’Antino) and Leanne (Hall) have done a great job this week and we’re all looking forward to trying to end the year on a high at Everton on Sunday.

On a tough away game at Everton this weekend…

It was a tough game last year as well, they do make it difficult up there. They’ve started in the league really well, Willie Kirk is a really good manager and he’ll have them really well organised. They have some really good players in their team, we know it will be another tough one.

On progression to the next round of the Conti Cup…

We need to keep the competitiveness up, even in training- we’re killing each other at times- but in a good way! We demand the best from each other and that’s what creates a winning team and we have that winning mentality.

It was frustrating to lose the Conti Cup Final last year, so we want to move into the next round with confidence and hopefully regain it this season.

On helping Ruby Grant and Mel Filis to acclimatise to the first team…

I give them a lot of stick in training! I like demanding a lot from them, it’s a big deal to play for this club and so we need to demand the best from each other. They’ve been working their socks off and you could see that tonight with how they were involved in the goals, they’re great professionals and they’re doing really well.