\n<\/p>\n
Six years at Arsenal and you\u2019re not done, Steph. Why did you decide to recommit to the club?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t think too much thought had to go into it, to be honest! For me, it was a no-brainer. At the stage I\u2019m at in my career, the way that I feel about the club, the way that I feel about my life and the relationships that I\u2019ve built here because of Arsenal, it just felt natural. <\/p>\n I feel like I\u2019ve achieved a lot here with the team, but there\u2019s also more I want to give back and more that I want to achieve in terms of trophies, building the squad and leading younger players. I\u2019ve still got that same hunger and desire to better myself and to do better by those around me as I did from the first day I walked through the door. There are so many possibilities and so much to look forward to still.<\/p>\n How do you think you\u2019ve developed as a leader since joining the club?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I first came to the league, I was a little more introverted because I was just trying to find my feet and I had a lot of injuries when I first got here. Becoming a more vocal leader on the pitch is something I\u2019ve naturally grown into. I\u2019ve always prided myself in communication on the field. As a left back, I was always communicating a lot with my centre back and my left winger, in particular, but the transition to centre back has just allowed me to connect with more people. I think I have more of an outward role these days in terms of my voice and presence, as well as my composure during matches. <\/p>\n I like to be able to control the tempo and make decisions based on how I\u2019m seeing the game. As a centre back, it gives you the right to do that and it\u2019s quite a unique place to be on the football field. As a left back you\u2019re often given the ball and left with one or two options to figure your way out of. I think my transition to centre back just so happened to coincide with me stepping into more of a leadership role at the club, so they went hand in hand.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Six years at Arsenal and you\u2019re not done, Steph. Why did you decide to recommit to the club? I don\u2019t think too much thought had to go into it, to … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}