Eleven games. Eleven starts. Ten goals.
Alessia Russo is reaping the benefits of working hard under Arsenal interim manager 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 on Wednesday 3-2 comeback win against Bayern Munich who topped their Women’s Champions League group.
It took Russo to reach 11 goals this season, 10 of which he scored under Slegers, with six coming in his last four games.
“I’m my biggest critic and I know sometimes I haven’t scored as much as I want to,” Russo told DAZN after the game.
“As strikers there are times and periods. It’s about riding the wave and when things are not good you withdraw, focus on training and that’s what I’ve done.”
England international Russo has started every game under Slegers since Jonas Eidevall resign as head coach in October.
Under the Swede, Russo started seven of nine matches at the start of the campaign, scoring just once.
“I’m just enjoying my football,” Russo said. “We are playing very good football and we are getting very important results. We are having a lot of fun and getting a lot of different connections on the pitch and we are often grinding the results in different ways.
“We’ve been working on a lot of different things, but in the final third how can we find different connections, how to create different types of attacks. It starts in training and we’ve been lucky enough to find it in matches too.
“It’s been good and we as players want more, we want to be responsible 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 February 7.
“We all feel good as a group,” Russo said. “We’ve been working hard. I know it sounds cliché but we really have. With the players and the staff we have, I would always back us.”
