Credit: Arsenal.com
The Arsenal Women Journal – A First Major Setback for Renée [ARS 0-1 LIV]
Hello, Arsenal Women aficionados!
I must say, I didn’t expect that result. Or, to be more accurate, I could have expected Liverpool to beat us thanks to a lucky shot, or even an own goal, but only in a scenario where we were dominating a squandering chance after chance.
Instead, Liverpool kicked us out of the FA Cup after a rather quiet afternoon at Meadow Park, with little to no threat from a strong Arsenal lineup. Daphne van Domselaar, after a couple of bad mistake, kept us in the game with a fine series of saves, while Laws in the other goal enjoyed a nice day out in the sun and had very little to do. Steph Catley got very close to opening the score, but her volley from inside the box fizzled wide of the far post, then Liverpool had the best chances until they finally got the goal, courtesy of an unfortunate own goal scored by Daphne van Domselaar with more than ten minutes to go: the Dutch goalkeeper sent the ball in her own net with her back, after the strike from hit the post.
Getting into the semifinals of the FA Cup would have been a great achievement and would have setup an exciting encounter with Chelsea, who are now more than favourites to go to Wembley and face either one of the Manchester clubs. With City sacking their coach this week and United in turmoil following the owner’s words, Chelsea could take advantage of the chaos and bring home the cup, while we will end the season empty-handed – unless something magic happens in Europe.
RENÉE’S WORDS
Speaking after the game, the head coach didn’t have much to complain about, as her players looks unusually slow and the whole team was visibly disjointed: “For us, the Arsenal way is being good on the ball. That’s very important for us. We just didn’t have the quality that we usually do on the ball today. […] A couple of circumstances and stoppages don’t allow us the rhythm, but that starts with our basics and the quality on the ball. That’s definitely what we can control and what we want to do better next time.”
When your players cannot string three passes together, or cannot press their opponents in an effective and coordinated way, there is not much to say, and Renée Slegers was happy to cut it short. For completeness, I will take some words from captain Kim Little, who didn’t shy away from the criticism and disappointment around the poor performance from the team.
The former Scotland international fully acknowledged the fans’ disappointment: “We could’ve been better and I think we’ll reflect and know our quality could have been better. So yeah, disappointing. I just want to thank all of our support and our fans for sticking by us and being behind us even though the result didn’t go our way”
Then, Kim Little went a bit more into the technical and tactical aspects of the game: “Credit to Liverpool: they made the game incredibly hard for us and at times, we didn’t match that […] We go into every game against opponents to try and nullify their threats and obviously, play the game the way we want to and I think we did do that with the set pieces. They’re obviously normally very good at set pieces and we minimised that and defended them really well, but they got the goal that won it in the end which we didn’t.
We probably didn’t make enough clear-cut chances really. Not sure how many we had but we weren’t clinical enough and maybe had the decisive edge in the final third and we need to look at that.”
For once, our problem wasn’t converting chances, but creating chances: we only registered seven shots across the 90 minutes, with only one of those hitting the target (on minute 83, by the way…), while we usually go in double figures with most of our domestic opponents. With Mariona Caldentey, Alessia Russo, Kim Litte, Caitlin Foord and Beth Mead all starting the game, to have such a low volume of attempts is a real worry.
LESSONS LEARNED
Chances, chances, chances.
As mentioned, we cannot rue any misses, as we didn’t create clear-cut chances at all, on Sunday.
Despite fielding a very strong starting XI and a powerful attacking line, we didn’t test Liverpool goalkeeper and didn’t put ourselves in a position to hurt the visitors, which is obviously the main take away from the miserable afternoon at Meadow Park.
In midfield, Kim Little and Kyra Cooney-Cross failed to control the ball and the tempo, while at the back both Leah Williamson and Steph Catley, our starting centre-backs, looked hesitant to engage with Liverpool forward and were slow to react to any loose ball, or second ball, often allowing it to rebound several times. The pitch was rather bad, which contributed to our inability to sustain pressure and keep possession of the ball, but no player in the team showed any willingness to adopt a different approach or find other ways to dominate the game.
Instead, we allowed Liverpool to put us under pressure with their aggressive press by making the same mistakes again and again, partly due to the wobbly nature of the pitch and partly because we didn’t know how to play in a different way.
It is always a bad sign when most of the post-match press conference revolves around the opponents wasting time, the pitch being inadequate and the overall conditions not being ideal, because it deflects the attention from the real problem: desire.
I am sure that players were up for it before the game, but it didn’t translate to the pitch as soon as the ball started to bounce awkwardly, and quick passes were not on anymore. This is when mentality kicks in, because desire can get you out of troubles when the pitch, the referee, the wind, the sun, the ball or whatever other external factor is against you. That’s probably the biggest disappointment of the afternoon, even more than exiting a competition that represented our best (sole) opportunity to bring a trophy home, this season.
Liverpool are a good team, well-organized and fiery, but we have better players and more quality in every department, so we should have found a way to deal with all those “external factors” and make those qualities count. We kept playing out of the back and into danger, we stubbornly refused to go direct even when we had Stina Blackstenius AND Amanda Ilestedt upfront, and Liverpool were happy to sit deep and hit us on the counter.
At times, you need a Plan B.
This defeat is probably the first big setback since Renée Slegers took over from Jonas Eidevall, so I am curious to see how she and the players will react to it: tomorrow we will play Everton away in the league, then on Tuesday we will face Real Madrid in Spain, for the first leg of the UWCL quarterfinals.
We don’t have the luxury of being self-commiserating.
NEXT’S UP
Next stop: Liverpool. On Friday night, we will play Everton at Walthon Hall Park and try to get a step closer to Manchester United, who plays Liverpool at Anfield. They’re both tricky games for Arsenal and Manchester United, but both teams will push hard to steer away from Manchester City, who were held to a draw by West Ham last week.
Shortly after the game, the team will fly to Spain to face Real Madrid, who qualified as the runner-up in Group B during the group stage, behind Chelsea. The Spanish giants are currently second in the league, five points behind serial-winners Barcelona, and clear of Atlético Madrid and Athletic Bilbao in third (+17 points), so will dedicate much of their energies to the UWCL, given that they won’t catch Barcelona but are not in danger of being leapfrogged by clubs immediately behind them.
We will talk again on Monday to discuss the away game at Everton and check on the team’s preparations for the big European night, on Tuesday.
Speak to you soon!
Italian living in Switzerland, Gooner since mid-nineties, when the Gunners defeated my hometown team, in Copenhagen. I started my own blog and podcast (www.clockenditalia.com) after after some experiences with Italian websites and football magazines. Covering Arsenal Women with the occasional rant about the boys.
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