Arsenal forward Caitlin Foord believes that latest opponents Lyon are still a world-class opponent, even without a whole host of their top players.
The two sides will contest a UEFA Women’s Champions League group stage match at the Groupama Stadium in Lyon tomorrow night. The hosts are the reigning European champions after defeating Spanish giants FC Barcelona 3-1 in last season’s final.
Lyon go into their latest European tie without a whole host of players including the likes of goal machine Ada Hegerberg, Catarina Macario, Dzsenifer Marozsán and Ellie Carpenter to name just a few. The total number of absentees runs into double figures.
Despite the French club’s reduced options, Arsenal forward Foord still views Lyon as the ones to beat in the UEFA Women’s Champions League this season.
“Yes, I think so (Lyon are the ones to beat),” Foord said when speaking in the pre-match press conference. “Regardless of whether they have injuries or not, the squad they have is very strong.
“The starting XI that they put out (in their last match) is a world-class team so it is going to be a good challenge for us, I’m excited to play against them. We have a team of world-class players ourselves so I think it is going to be a really good match.”
Arsenal suffered heavy defeats in both of their group matches against the previous European champions FC Barcelona in last season’s competition. Foord went on to say that The Gunners need to be ready for their next big challenge.
She said “We definitely had a lot of learnings from those games and we have obviously looked at those matches a lot heading into the big games. It purely comes down to us. I think we have to be up for the challenge and ready for these games because in the previous games that we have had, we have seen what can happen and we don’t want that to happen again. We want to learn and improve from what went wrong in those games.
“This game will be a big challenge for us to see how far we have come.”
Arsenal’s UEFA Women’s Champions League group fixture against Lyon kicks-off at 8pm on Wednesday evening.