‘A big achievement’ – Arsenal boss Eidevall delighted with ticket sales for Leicester City clash | OneFootball

Arsenal head coach Jonas Eidevall says that selling more than 40,000 tickets for their fixture against Leicester City is a big achievement.

The Gunners face The Foxes in their latest fixture at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday afternoon.

After hosting a North London Derby at the Emirates Stadium, along with a number of high-profile fixtures, staging the Leicester City game in N7 seemed like a test to see just how strong the Arsenal support can be. Despite the fixture being against a side in the bottom half of the Barclays Women’s Super League table, Arsenal have still managed to sell a huge number of tickets, much to the delight of head coach Eidevall.

“I think it’s a really good sign of how strong the support is for the team in getting ticket sales like this,” Eidevall said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “I think sometimes we have to zoom out and did we think that this was realistic two-and-a-half years ago? I don’t think we really thought that, so it shows how big the growth has been and what amazing work both the team and the club have been doing in order to bring it to this point together with the supporters.

“Being able to sell more than 40,000 tickets for this game here I think is a big achievement, but hopefully we can sell more. There is still time and every single one of Arsenal’s supporters that wants to make the game will make a difference for us, so hopefully there will be plenty more people.”

Finnish forward Jutta Rantala could provide a goal threat for Arsenal’s opponents Leicester City this weekend. She has scored four goals in her last five matches for The Foxes. Eidevall sees the player as a danger, however, he has been impressed with Leicester City’s entire attacking unit.

He said “I think Leicester have a really high-quality squad. I think they recruited very strongly and their whole forward trio with Deanne Rose, [Lena] Petermann and Rantala are all very, very good players. Also, seeing both [Saori] Takarada and [Yuka] Momiki that they signed from Linköping in midfield, they are very highly-qualitative international players. It’s not as easy with any top team when you’re playing them that you can only focus on one or two players.

“If I’m surprised with Rantala, no I’m not. I’ve seen her playing in Sweden for many years and I know she has a lot of quality on her finishing. She’s always been a very dangerous offensive player and it’s nice to see that she’s been able to do that transition so good from the Swedish league to here in the WSL and really making her mark in the league as well.”

Arsenal’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture against Leicester City kicks-off at 2pm on Sunday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.