Renée Slegers admitted she was not thinking about anything apart from the North London Derby as Arsenal looked to get their first WSL win since the opening day with a trip to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to face Tottenham.

The Gunners are currently 8th in the league with 6 points from half a dozen games, while Spurs are fourth with 10 points, although they’ve lost 6-1 to London City and 6-2 to Chelsea in their last two league games.

Slegers refused to get drawn into questions about the season’s aims, focusing on Saturday’s task.

“At the moment, I’m not looking at the table. As you said, it’s really game by game. That’s our mindset.

So the next one is the North London derby, and we look forward to it; it’s coming up now.

As I said, the motivation is the fans that will be there for us tomorrow and the fight that we will bring for them onto the pitch.

That’s the only thing I’m thinking about, and that’s what we’ve set as a group as well. It’s game to game for us now.”

Team news

Arsenal would have the same squad available as they did for their draw with Birmingham last week, although Daphne van Domselaar would return to the matchday squad for the first time this season.

“We have the same squad available as we had against Birmingham. Daphne will be in the squad tomorrow. It’s too early to play, but we want to get her back into the routine of being with the team. She’ll do the warm-up.

Kim [Little] is managing a knock as well. She was ill, managing something. We hope to have her back soon, but she won’t make it.

Chloe Kelly is not ready to play. Katie Reid is training almost fully with the team now, which is really, really good. So she’s coming closer and closer. It looks really good.

I think that’s about it. Mich [Agyemang] is, of course, working in the background as well, not on the pitch yet, but hopefully soon too.”

A poor start left the Gunners nine points off in the fight for the final UEFA Women’s Champions League spot, which was occupied by London City, and although Slegers admitted that they were thinking about it, she quickly reaffirmed the need to focus on the next game.

“Yeah, of course that’s in the back of our heads, but for where we are now and what we need right now, it’s to get back to winning ways.

“We can only do that with the next game in front of us. So that’s why the next game in front of us is the most important right now.”