The result left Arsenal 12 points behind current leaders and defending champions Manchester City, and nine points off the Women’s Champions League spots.

It could've been so much worse for the Gunners, who were booed off at the Emirates Stadium, if not for Olivia Smith scoring a stunner midway through the second half to cancel out Océane Hurtré’s goal opener for Birmingham.

Despite enduring their worst start to a WSL season since 2014, Slegers still remained confident that she could turn things around, insisting it was minor issues which the team needed to solve.

“I've just come off the pitch, and I'm sitting here with you now. Everything I want is what's best for Arsenal and what's best for these players. That's very much on my mind.

‘I still believe I can have an impact and help the team move forward. But I think that if I'm no longer able to do that, then a change needs to happen.

“I believe in where we can go with this team, even though it's been really tough. As I said, if everything had been negative and we hadn't looked like Arsenal, that would be a different situation. But, in my opinion, that isn't the case.

“There are certain details we need to get right, and those details are costing us at the moment. Those fine margins are hurting us, but I believe that if we get those things right, we'll be good.”

Arsenal have failed to win any of their first three league games at the Emirates, with draws against Crystal Palace and Manchester United coming before the Birmingham result. Slegers insisted that there was a lot of frustration about the performance.

“The emotion is frustration; this is another game in the league,  I think six now, where things have played out in a similar way.

“We should have won this game at home against Birmingham. They had one dangerous break and scored from it. That was the one player we needed to stop at that moment, and we didn't. We then found ourselves in a situation where we had to chase the game again.

“There's a lot of frustration. Looking at the first half, it was difficult for us to build momentum. Our tempo needed to be higher, and we needed to be better with the basics: duels, positional details and our work on the ball. We turned the ball over at times, which cost us momentum and took energy out of the team, both physically and mentally.

“In the second half, we conceded that goal, but after that I think we played with urgency and a strong willingness to create chances. We had 27 shots in total, if I'm remembering correctly, so we created a lot.

“Liv [Smith] scored a really good goal to bring us back into the game, but we couldn't get the second one into the net, which is, of course, very frustrating.”

Arsenal scored five goals in six league games, with two of them coming at home. Despite having the second-highest average possession in the league (62.8%), they’d created just 11.0 xG and 16 big chances.

Slegers believed that the build-up and decision-making were two bigger issues to focus on in the present, rather than why the attackers were struggling heavily in front of goal.

“I think it starts with how we set things up positionally and the quality of the final pass, not the assist itself, but the pass before the pass.

“It's about setting someone up to do something good with the ball. If we execute that with detail and speed, we're more likely to find a good finishing position in the box and create the free cross or passing opportunity in the right area.

“Then there's the decision-making: am I the right player to take the shot now, or should I pass it to someone else? It's about making that final decision under pressure, keeping our composure, and then getting the technical details of the finish right.

“We know these players can finish, so I think that will be the last thing we look at. The other two areas- our build-up to the chance and our decision-making- are more important for us to focus on first.”