‘The players can talk to me any time they want’, says Joe Montemurro

Despite being on the other side of the world and 10 hours ahead of the UK, Joe Montemurro has told his squad that he’s always free to talk.

Our head coach returned to Melbourne in early March for personal reasons – and he’s remained there since with the support of his family, a luxury he knows not all of his players possess.

“The most important thing right now is to be available,” Montemurro told Arsenal Player on Friday morning. 

“They can talk to me at any time whenever they want to and whichever staff member they want to as well, or even among themselves. I know there’s a lot of group scenarios happening with a lot of fun and a bit of competition amongst them right now. It’s fundamentally important that we can’t have the physical get togethers, but we can definitely have some fun by communicating. Communication is paramount.

“We’ve [all been doing video calls together], but it’s probably more banter than anything of any productive nature! But it’s great, they’ve been really good and a couple of players have just started to do their own little bits and pieces in couples. It’s been good to just catch up on an ad hoc sort of base and have a bit of a laugh and see each other’s faces.

“It’s more just to make people laugh, to be honest. It’s a testing time and these privileges as players have been taken away, we don’t have the choices and we’re told what to do. It’s an interesting time not only for the sport, but as human beings too. It’s a great time for us to really recalibrate and reboot.”

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