Mace gets valuable experience playing against us, a win-win-Montemurro

Joe Montemurro

believes

Ruby Mace

featuring for Birmingham City against

is a “win-win” for everyone since this would give her “valuable experience” as she is out on a loan contract.

Mace is preparing to go against Arsenal in a Women’s Super League game on Sunday. Birmingham City bought her as a dual registration in January and Montemurro is eager to see her performance against her parent club.

“

I know there's a sort of coaches' ethical agreement that they don't play against the team that they've been loaned out from,

” Montemurro said.

“

It wasn't really a difficult decision for me, Ruby is out on loan for a purpose, she's out on loan to get game time and to play against the best teams possible.

“She'll get valuable experience playing against us, so, from my perspective, it's a win-win for all of us. She gets the minutes of football and more importantly, she gets that development that we need to bring her back.”

Mace began her professional play for Arsenal in September 2020, having her start in a 4-0 victory over

in the FA Cup as she climbed off the bench. She made six appearances in all competitions for Arsenal before going away on a loan spell to Birmingham where she has featured in three matches until now. She is playing in the centre of defence, whereas she started in the midfield for Montemurro’s side.

Her former coach believes she can gain experience with her new role when she returns to Arsenal.

“

It was quite an interesting one because when we were approached, or when we were looking at Birmingham, they were looking for a centre-half and we know she'd played there with the junior national team so she's very, very comfortable in that position,

” he added.

“

We still consider her in the midfield role but I think the type of midfielder that she is, she's probably going to be more of a creative, structural and building the play sort of midfielder. For her to be playing and have that responsibility as a centre-back at Birmingham suits us fine.

“From my perspective, she's going to be put in positions where she's going to be under pressure and it's valuable for us and we think she'll mature really, really quickly playing in that position.”

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