Arroyo previews Everton encounter

Aston Villa welcome Everton to Villa Park tomorrow afternoon for an exciting Women's Super League encounter.

The Villans return to action for the first time since the February international break with their sights firmly set on returning to winning ways.

Head Coach Natalia Arroyo sat down with Villa TV to preview the clash.

Here is what she had to say …

On returning to action

"It is always important for us to play and to play at home is especially important and hopefully we can have the same passion and energy that we had in my first game there.

"It will again be a tough game, against a very good opponent – they play really, really well.

"When you have an international break it’s not the best way to prepare because you don’t have all of your players, they will be with us for just two sessions.

"But there’s no excuses, we need to perform better than we’ve done against Leciester – we were very disappointed.

"Now is the moment to show another face so it is our goal to be competitive, to be strong and to get the three points."

On creating stronger bonds with the backroom staff

"Not playing at the weekend gives you a week where you don't have the stress of preparing for a game and finding the strategy but to think about your own process.

"And we could find the time that we haven’t had in the other three weeks to really think about our team, our strengths now, the possibilities that we can find in the game.

"So, it was internally from the staff quite an interesting week to rethink some processes and find the more clear ways to try and get results."

On working with the players that remained at Bodymoor Heath

"With the players that stayed here we were very honest with.

"We watched some actions from the Leicester game and we let them talk and we asked them ‘what do they feel about that?’

"Now we need to show what kind of conclusions we were able to get from that but I think that being honest and saying ‘ok, that’s not enough’ and that we need to play with more passion sometimes and to understand at some points it won’t be comfortable and we need to show that we fight more than the opponents and against Leicester we weren’t at that level.

"So being honest on the inside is the only way and now it’s a moment to put these words into action again so I think it was interesting to be here even not being with the whole team."

On the team's desire to earn the three points

"When it’s not ok to lose that means that you want to win and I think that is the desire, the intentions and the goal of this group.

"But it’s not about ‘I want to win’ you need to find these solutions and this will in the game especially when you are not able to play the game that you want.

"It won’t be ideal for us and we need to struggle and deal with that and the pressure sometimes.

"We need to try and bit a little more patient with the ball and that will be important in the key games in this part of the season that is left.

"And when we are out of possession we need to defend as a unit and defend as a team as we did against Chelsea and Brighton.

"We have some examples to take but I see that the players are commited with that and that they are disappointed, they are sad, they are angry and they want to play and now it’s up to me and up to them to pick the best team possible and to manage different moments of the game properly so that we can compete.

"It will be tough for us because they are very good with the ball, they will make us run a lot but at some points we will think ‘are we in or not’ so we need to manage our emotions so we are really feeling that we can and hopefully the supporters will help us."

On playing at Villa Park

"I think that they want to play and the game is in an amazing stadium so that’s great and you always want to play these kind of games.

"There’s no excuse of the pitch, no excuse of needing to travel anywhere as it’s home and it is close to us.

"It is a stadium where we need to feel better and that doesn’t mean that it will be easy and we know how difficult it will be from now until the end of the season but I think that we have the intention to show a better version and that will put us in a better position to win.

"We have a lot of things to learn from and hopefully we can show the version that we want to be and ‘what’s the team we want to be’ isn’t saying it’s doing.

"We need to set a right benchmark of what we want to be by showing our best."