Arsenal beat Manchester City by a goal to nil at Emirates Stadium today, putting a dent in the Sky Blues’ title charge.
The stakes were high. A win for Andrée Jeglertz’s side today would probably seal the Women’s Super League (WSL) title. For Arsenal, the focus had already shifted to securing a top-three finish, with second and third place offering qualification for next season’s UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL).
Ahead of the match, City already sat comfortably at the top of the table, holding an eleven-point lead over second-placed Manchester United. Arsenal were placed fourth, just two points behind United, though they do have a game in hand.
Arsenal wouldn’t have underestimated the strength of Manchester City anyway, but surely City’s 5-1 beating of Chelsea last week underlined that the Gunners had to bring their A-game today, and they did.
The Gunners were a changed side compared to their starting eleven against Corinthians in the FIFA Women’s Champions Cup last week. Stina Blackstenius misses out due to a calf niggle, and Anneke Borbe is not available after taking a big knock to the head and neck in last week’s Champions Cup final. van Domselaar and Foord come into the starting eleven.
Meanwhile, Andrée Jeglertz made no changes to his City team compared to last week’s match against Chelsea.
The Lineups
ARS: van Domselaar; Fox, Wubben-Moy, Catley, McCabe; 8. Caldentey, Little, Russo; Mead, Smith, Foord
MCI: Yamashita; Casparij, Rose, Knaak, Greenwood; Hasegawa, Blindkilde Brown, Miedema; Hemp, Shaw, Kerolin
The Action
Arsenal started the match with a different choice up front: Olivia Smith leads the line for the Gunners. It is her first time playing in the nine in an official match as she kicks off the match for the North London side. The match is exciting right from the start. In the first minute, City rob the ball off Arsenal and Miedema shoots wide.
Just minutes later, Foord’s pass doesn’t manage to find Olivia Smith right in front of goal. Bunny Shaw is defended really well on the other end of the pitch when the ball is taken off her. Both sides find a lot of joy in attack but it’s Arsenal who have the majority of the possession at the start of the match. City start finding more joy in central areas however, and press higher up the pitch as the minutes go by.
It is a combination of Kim Little and Mariona Caldentey, who in turn finds Olivia Smith, that breaks the deadlock. The Canadian finishes a one-on-one with Yamashita.
After a spell of City possession, Caitlin Foord picks up the ball centrally and shoots straight at Ayaka Yamashita. Right away at the other end of the pitch, Kerolin finds Shaw whose shot is blocked. Moments later, the ball finds Katie McCabe on the edge of the box and shoots just wide. Ahead of half-time, both sides create some chances, but Shaw shoots straight at van Domselaar, and Russo’s shot is saved by Yamashita.
Yamashita comes into action again after Russo heads the resulting corner towards goal. The half ends with shouts for a penalty after Olivia Smith goes down in the box, but the referee isn’t keen.
Sam Coffey comes on for Laura Blindkilde Brown at half-time, which one would imagine is a move by Jeglertz to gain more control at the centre of the pitch, an area targeted by Arsenal a lot in the first half.
Arsenal are forced out wide a bit more in the second period. Right out wide, Smith picks up the ball, drives towards goal and manages to get a shot away, but it is blocked and goes out for a corner. Kim Little catches Sam Coffey out of possession minutes later and finds Foord, who hits the side netting.
A chance on the other side as Shaw finds Hemp, but Mariona tackles and goes for the ball, according to the referee, while Hemp, her City teammates and City fans think otherwise.
Mead comes off for Frida Maanum in the 66th minute, which means Alessia Russo moves to the nine position and Smith moves out wide. In form Kerolin is taken off a few minutes later, which is a testament to Arsenal’s ability to defend her in this match. Swiss international Iman Beney, who scored the winner in the reverse fixture, comes on for her.
City grow into the game more and more and Miedema scores, but the referee blows the whistle for a foul on Katie McCabe before she takes a shot. Slegers makes a triple substitution in the 82nd minute, with Holmberg, Kelly and Williamson coming on for McCabe, Smith and Williamson.
Interestingly, instead of moving Fox to the left and playing Holmberg on the right, Holmberg plays on the left side. Just after this substitution Yamashita goes down and the teams move to the sidelines to speak to their coaches.
Yamashita is okay to continue and Slegers brings on Laia Codina from the bench for Mariona Caldentey. Six minutes were added on at the end of the match as City were trying to score one of their own, but failed to do so.
Potent Man City attack versus solid Arsenal defence
When we wrote our preview piece on Manchester City at the start of the season, we said that City might just win the WSL with the quality they have, if Jeglertz’ playing style resonated with the players. And it looks like it very much does.
Manchester City have scored 41 league goals so far this season, compared to Arsenal’s 26. That greater clinical edge in front of goal has been a defining factor in City’s campaign and goes a long way towards explaining the gap between the two sides in the Women’s Super League standings.
Last week’s result against Chelsea highlighted their confidence and consistency in front of goal, while also showing that they are not just relying on Bunny Shaw to score the goals anymore, as opposed to under Gareth Taylor.\
City have 12 different goal scorers in the league this campaign. Arsenal have shown they can mix it with the best, but they’ve dropped more points than City overall. They have drawn five of their league matches already and lost one, where City have lost just one and drawn none. They are far less potent in front of goal than their Manchester competitors.
The Gunners manage to get a lot of shots in matches, but just fail to convert that dominance into actual goals and matches won. In their stalemate against Manchester United a few weeks ago, Arsenal created 25 shots, but just six went on target and none went in the back of Phallon Tullis-Joyce’s net.
Last season, they scored 31 goals in their equivalent matches, compared to 21 goals in the same matches this season (excluding their win against London City Lionesses, who were just promoted into the top flight this season).
It is not just City’s dominance in front of goal that has been so impressive. While City struggled a lot defensively last season, this season they have solidified their back line. City dropped 11 points from winning positions last season and conceded 28 goals. In comparison, Manchester United only conceded 16 goals.
Jeglertz has started the pair of Rebecca Knaak and Jade Rose at centre back for most of their recent matches and they have certainly held the fort. Rose has been impressive for the Manchester Blues, especially considering last year she was playing college football.
Last season, we saw City collapse after injuries to players like Greenwood and Hemp. The back line especially relied heavily on Greenwood. However, Greenwood was injured last November and for most of December. In that period, they kept three clean sheets and conceded just one goal.
Defensively, the Gunners have been more solid than Manchester City, with just ten goals conceded to City’s thirteen (the Gunners however, have played one fewer match).
City do keep quite a high defensive line, and Arsenal did well to exploit that for their first goal. Stina Blackstenius loves a goal against the Cityzens, but was sidelined for this match. Slegers and the coaching staff clearly found a good replacement in Olivia Smith for this match. Blackstenius loves to run in behind, and Smith’s speed is perfectly suited to do just that, too.
Arsenal’s opening goal is a classic Stina Blackstenius goal, it just wasn’t Stina Blackstenius scoring it. Arsenal tried the ball in behind to Olivia Smith a few more times, but City’s defence was growing more and more aware of that danger, with Yamashita stepping in to clear the ball away a few times.
At the other end of the pitch, the Gunners were solid, just as they have been all season. That solidity may be one of the reasons Arsenal aren’t scoring as much as they would like to. Today, their back line did really well to keep City’s (probably) league-winning front line quiet.
A lot of that defensive effort fell into the hands of the double pivot of Mariona Caldentey and Kim Little, who have done really well to protect their back line, while starting attacks at the same time. Slegers took Mariona off for Laia Codina and moved her side into a back five to manage the back end of the game.
This was defence versus attack, and Arsenal’s defence did so very well to keep City’s attack quiet. Slegers’ game plan to play the ball in behind to exploit City’s weakness won in the end.
