Jonas Eidevall says Mana Iwabcuchi made the difference in Arsenal’s 4-0 win over Aston Villa on Saturday evening.

The Japanese international came on at half-time with the score still locked in at 0-0 to create a spark for the Gunners.

“It definitely helped us to play the game in a better way and it helped to attract their midfielders to open up more space,” Eidevall said.

“You know you can’t give a player like Mana a lot of time and she will constantly drag players onto her and she is so fast at moving the ball that it gives someone else more space.

“Once we started attracting their players, spaces opened up and it becomes easier to move the ball faster. It’s harder if we don’t get that initial movement.”

Kim Little found the back of the net twice, her first goal being her 150th for the Gunners.

“She is an amazing player. She is one of those players that you see in games when you are not her coach you see she is a great player and you are very excited to work with her and then you coach her and you realise she is even better than you thought," said Eidevall.

“Great leadership, great football player, great game intelligence – it was really nice to see her score twice too.”

Aston Villa manager Carla Ward said after the game that this is the best Arsenal team in ten years.

Eidevall said: “We need to keep our focus and keep thinking about the next practice, the next game and not to look too far ahead and keep developing. Today was a new step for us, we played against a difficult low block and we learned from it.

“The next time we play against a team that does that we have something to fall back on and the things we talked about at half-time will come faster to us. We have a lot of different styles to play against and think about how to break them down in the best possible way.”

Eidevall took off Vivianne Miedema with 25 minutes to go, with the Gunners 1-0 ahead.

“It was more of a loading choice to be honest," he said. "Caitlin Foord is also a very good number nine, both when there is space available to us and when she holds the ball up and she is good at winning free-kicks when it’s played into feet in tight areas, the game became a good fit for Caitlin.”