Eleven games. Eleven starts. Ten goals.
Alessia Russo is reaping the rewards of hard work under Arsenal interim boss Renee Slegers and her fine form continued in the Gunners’ final game before the winter break.
The 25-year-old scored Arsenal’s second goal in Wednesday’s 3-2 comeback win against Bayern Munich that sealed top spot in their Women’s Champions League group.
It took Russo’s tally to 11 goals for the season, 10 of which have been scored under Slegers, with six coming in her last four games.
“I’m my own biggest critic and I know at times I have definitely not scored as much as I want to,” Russo told DAZN after the game.
“As strikers you always have moments and spells. It’s about riding the wave and when things aren’t good it’s stripping it back, focusing on training and that’s what I have done.”
England international Russo has started every game under Slegers after Jonas Eidevall resigned as head coach in October.
Under the Swede, Russo started seven of nine games at the start of the campaign, scoring just once.
“I’m just enjoying my football,” Russo said. “We’re playing really nice football and we are picking up really important results. We are really enjoying ourselves and finding so many different connections on the pitch and often grinding out results in different kinds of ways.
“We’ve been working on lots of different things, but in the final third how we can find different connections, how we can create different types of attacks. It starts in training and we have been lucky enough to find it in matches too.
“It’s been great and us as players want more, we want to take accountability and that’s what we’re doing.”
Arsenal and Russo head into the winter break full of confidence, eagerly awaiting the Champions League quarter-final draw on 7 February.
“We’re all feeling really positive as a group,” Russo said. “We have just been working really hard. I know it sounds cliche but we really have. With the players and staff we have got, I would always back us.”
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