By Cameron Sheath

Arsenal’s men turned what should have been a straight-forward victory in Prague into a nervous affair last night, escaping with a 2-1 win, mainly due to the Czech side’s lack of quality in the final third. I have some thoughts on Viktor Gyokeres after his ‘Player of the Match’ performance, but with so much talk surrounding the women’s team at the moment, that seems like a more worthwhile use of my time today.

Arsenal currently sit seventh in the WSL table, six points behind London City Lionesses, who occupy the third and final Champions League qualification spot. Whilst not the end of the world, it’s a long way from where the team would have expected to be after eight games, having finished just four points off a title win back in May.

Disruption

The club’s dealings in the summer transfer window marked the first steps in a phased changing of the guard among Renee Slegers’ playing staff. Out went Beth Mead, Katie McCabe, and Manuela Zinsberger, who between them had contributed 27 years and 436 appearances to the club. Kim Little, who already holds legend status, signed a one-year extension, which one would think will be her last in North London.

In came a host of new faces, including Georgia Stanway, Misa Rodriguez, Lisa Baum, Geraldine Reuteler, Selina Cerci, Ona Batlle, Elisa De Almeida, and Isabella Damm. With the exception of Damm, that’s seven players who were all brought in to impact the first team immediately. Of those seven, six featured against Aston Villa at the weekend, with four of those six starting, and the only one missing out (Cerci) doing so because of injury.

Misfiring Gunners

Speaking of Cerci, it’s worth noting that, of all the players Arsenal brought in this summer, the German forward was the only one with anything close to a prolific goalscoring record coming in. Cerci scored 32 goals in 43 league games for Hoffenheim over two years, sharing the league’s top-goal-scorer award in 2025, before missing out by a single goal last campaign.

With Arsenal’s main problem this season being that they can’t turn their overall dominance into goals, it’s fair to wonder what difference a player like Cerci would already have made had she been available. Beyond Cerci, Mariona Caldentey has also missed Arsenal’s last four games, including the frustrating home draws with Villa and Birmingham City, while Chloe Kelly, so often a difference-maker, has been out since the Chelsea loss in September.

That’s not to say that Slegers’ hasn’t had enough attacking talent at her disposal to get better results this season; she certainly has. But it takes an awful lot of cohesion to break down a deep block, regardless of the opposition, and Arsenal’s new-look squad just hasn’t been able to build that yet.

Unfortunately, when they have broken down those deep blocks and created chances, they’ve often failed to capitalise. Arsenal have the second-highest XG in the WSL this season, behind only Chelsea, but have scored the fourth-fewest goals. It takes just one goal to turn a draw into a win, and Arsenal have dropped eight points via draws this season, all games in which they had plenty of opportunities to find the net.

Avengers, Assemble

I don’t watch Marvel films; I don’t really like fantasy or sci-fi, as I struggle to connect with things that aren’t grounded in reality. I quite like Batman, but those have more of a gritty, crime feel, rather than a superhero feel, and we know that people with the wealth it would take to do what Batman does actually exist in the real world. However, be it Musk, Bezos, or Altman, I firmly believe Albert would have been good enough to murder them 30 seconds into the first film.

If I’d known this subtitle would have lead to this much of a detour then I’d have probably gone with something else, but I’m over a paragraph in, now, so you’ll just have to bear with me.

Imagine you’re in a Spiderman film and a building is collapsing; everyone is terrified, but you know who to look out for. The same applies to an Iron Man film, or Captain America, or Ant Man (fucking ‘Ant Man’?). When you’re in an Avengers film, though, you don’t know who’s going to show up. Or is it all of them every time? I don’t know; let’s just get through this horrendous segment and move on with our lives.

Now imagine an Avengers film in which a building is collapsing, and only one of the heroes (Alessia Russo) has appeared. Try as she might, she can’t stop a young, Dutch, Champions League-winning pedestrian (Slegers) from being pelted with falling rocks and rubble (the media). Some of those rocks should really have the decency not to land so heavily on the young pedestrian – she won a Champions League, after all – but some rocks are just rocks.

Anyway, at some point in the scene, you would expect one or both of the aforementioned characters to shout something along the lines of ‘Where the actual fuck is everybody else?!’

I don’t think this metaphor could have been any clearer, but if you still need it spelled out for you, it’s time for some other players to step up and take responsibility for turning these draws into wins. Otherwise, their likeable Dutch head coach is going to be Stroopwafeled into the pavement by building debris.

Patience

If you’ve made it this far then you don’t need a lesson in patience, but I feel like the noise around the manager in recent days and weeks has been over the top. Slegers has more than earned the benefit of the doubt. She’s trying to balance results with the integration of several new players, many of whom are still young and learning their craft, while the players she’s relying on are underperforming, lacking in confidence, or both.

While many, including myself, have questioned her tactical decisions, there aren’t many players in the squad who have demanded a place in the team with their performances. Those who have, have been rewarded. Those who haven’t continue to be rotated as Slegers waits for someone to stand out and take their opportunity.

I didn’t agree with the use of Olivia Smith in the No.9 role, but Arsenal won back-to-back games and she kept her place. That could be an area that now rotates, with either Blackstenius leading the line at Anfield, or Russo pushing forward and Smith, Reuteler or Little starting in the 10.

Slegers has been criticised for her post-Villa press conference, in which she criticised her players more than usual and pointed to a lack of energy as the main culprit for another two dropped points. I personally like the fact that she went after the players, and nobody questioned Mikel Arteta for doing the same with his men’s team after last night, and his team won.

Blaming a lack of energy was also not a cop out, as some have suggested. Slegers clearly made a point of that at half-time as the team’s intensity was far higher coming out of the break. Maintaining that intensity as each half progresses is the job of the team’s on-field leaders, which leads me to favor the inclusion of Little in starting line-ups for the next game or two.

All in all, the frustration around Arsenal’s start to this season has been justified, but way too much of that frustration has been directed at the manager. The summer’s transition has been anything but seamless, but transitions rarely are. Arsenal are still dominating games and you can’t blame Slegers for her players players missing chances.

London City travel to both Arsenal and Chelsea in their next four league games, so Arsenal could easily be third by Christmas. It’s not a great moment for the team, but it’s nowhere near as bad as people would have you believe. There is talent there, both on the pitch and on the sidelines. Chill.