Joe Montemurro has heaped praise on his Arsenal Women’s team after ‘another successful season’.

The defending Women’s Super League champions were sitting in third place when the 2019-20 campaign was cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic, four points behind leaders Manchester City with a game in hand.

And Australian Montemurro told Arsenal.com: “You’ve only got to look at the overseas interest, the impressive television viewing figures and rising matchday attendances to see how successful this season was.

“The platform that we’ve now built to launch ourselves off is really exciting and I think all of us within the game have been missing it desperately.

“Because of that, I think the thirst to get back into our flow and back into the action will make things even more exciting when football returns, so I’m looking forward to an even bigger season.”

Talking about the season as whole, Montemurro added: “We achieved a lot in terms of records too with our 11-1 victory over Bristol City and setting a new WSL record attendance in the North London derby.

“We also made it to another cup final and our Champions League campaign was running along quite nicely, so there’s a lot of positive things for us to look back on.

“But we didn’t just make progress on the pitch. Following the popularity of the 2019 Women’s World Cup, we were able to succeed off it too.”

It was one of the most thrilling title races in recent Women’s Super League seasons with three clubs battling for the crown and the 50-year-old said: “I think we were leading into a really important part of the season and when you look at the games that we had remaining, it was set to be a really exciting end to the title race.

“We still had a really good chance of achieving something and we placed ourselves in a really good position.

“We obviously had a little bit of a tough spot shortly after the new year with injuries and so on, but it’s always very, very difficult to back up a title-winning campaign with another.

“You become the hunted and the expectations are huge, and I’ve been so proud of the players for the way they stepped up to that expectation and showed their worth by continuing to play that brand of football and winning games on an almost weekly basis.”

The Gunners had played 15 matches in the WSL in 2019/20, winning 12 games and losing three times.