Arsenal's attacking limitations exposed in narrow Chelsea defeat
Arsenal put in a brave performance in their 1-0 defeat to Chelsea, but lack of attacking output remains a concern.
After 103 days in charge, Renee Slegers finally knows how it feels to lose a game as Arsenal head coach. Arsenal's first defeat under the Dutchwoman came at the hands of runaway WSL leaders Chelsea, the same team that inflicted the final defeat upon their former head coach Jonas Eidevall. It means that any slim title hopes that the Gunners carried into this game following a run of five consecutive wins are now firmly extinguished, with the Blues opening up a ten point gap between themselves and their London rivals.
Aside from the first ten minutes in which the Gunners struggled to compose themselves and get to grips with Chelsea's physicality, this was not a bad performance from Arsenal on the whole. After a shaky start, they defended stoutly, with Steph Catley putting in a particularly robust performance. In midfield, Kyra Cooney-Cross delivered the performance of her Arsenal career, showing composure to escape Chelsea pressure on a number of occasions and ultimately completing 91% of her passes – the most of any player on the pitch.
As the first half went on, they were able to create a number of chances, enjoying a particularly strong spell in the second part of the first half. Alessia Russo dragged a shot wide after Erin Cuthbert presented her with the ball on the edge of the box. Beth Mead had a close-range shot blocked by Niamh Charles. Emily Fox was denied inside the box by Hannah Hampton. Beth Mead missed the target when looking to bend in an effort with her instep in what was Arsenal's chance of the match. In truth, Arsenal probably needed one of those chances to go in. Stamford Bridge is not somewhere in which you can afford to be wasteful.
That said, rueing those missed opportunities only tells part of the story of this Arsenal performance. A bigger problem for was that this was the only period in the game in which they were able to consistently create chances. For all their good work to keep an unstoppable Chelsea side at bay until Kim Little's misjudged challenge in the box on Lauren James in the 82nd minute, this was a match in which Arsenal had just 10 shots compared to their opponents' 21. Not for the first time this season, an imbalance of profiles in the forward line was the source of many an issue in attack.
After Caitlin Foord was forced off with an injury late in the first half, Arsenal had to reshuffle their forward line. With no natural winger on the bench, Slegers opted to bring on Frida Maanum, with Mariona Caldentey moving out to the left. While the Spain international has played in this position many times this season, and generally to very good effect, there have been times where opposing teams have been able to force her into to sub-optimal positions and negate her threat. We can see this in the screenshot below, as she ends up crowded out of the game by Chelsea players in the left-back position before eventually giving the ball away.
This is in stark contrast to the first half, where she is able to create the aforementioned chance for Fox as a result of operating in the number 10 position.
Mariona has been one of Arsenal's most influential players this season, but on this occasion, she was marked out of the game for long periods. That and the increased attentions of Mille Bright on Alessia Russo meant that a second-half out ball was non-existent as Chelsea pushed Arsenal back.
On the right, Arsenal stuck with Mead, who has started in each of Arsenal's three games since the winter break. While she could be described as Arsenal's only remaining 'winger' on pitch following Foord's injury, this is something of a miscasting of a player who at her best is known for finishing moves as a wide forward rather than taking her opponent on. Arsenal's forward line would become yet more cumbersome in the second half, with Slegers rolling the dice by bringing on Stina Blackstenius for Mead, meaning that the final form of Arsenal's attack in this game was to play a centre forward that lacks pace in Russo from the right and a creative 10 in Mariona from the left while Blackstenius tried to force the issue through the middle.
This meant that Arsenal's full-backs, both of whom have started every WSL game for the club this season (although Katie McCabe's run of games will at least come to an end now following her straight red card and two match ban for foul and abusive language towards referee Emily Heaslip), had to work tirelessly to provide the width. Indeed, one of the few chances Arsenal created in the second period came from an underlapping Fox run through the heart of the Chelsea defence before pulling the ball back to Maanum in the centre of the box.
All of this meant that Arsenal were playing with their hands tied behind their back going forward in the second half, as they did not possess a player capable of taking on their opponent and causing havoc with their speed and dribbling in the manner that Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, Sandy Baltimore, and most decisively on this occasion, James, had been able to do for their opposition on the day.
Before the match, Chelsea paraded women's football's first ever $1-million player in Naomi Girma, but the 90 minutes that followed served as a reminder that Arsenal could with completing some January business of their own.
very much enjoyed this as a fair assessment of the game, and bigger picture of where arsenal's squad is vs chelsea's, which doesn't centre the controversy (even if imo it really wasn't all that controversial!) of the penalty and red card calls.
there's no denying that watching my tv as an arsenal fan i was filled with impending dread as we approached the 55-60 minute mark in which slegers has made gamewinning changes in recent weeks, with the realisation that we'd already deployed the tactic of adjusting mariona's role as a consequence of needing to take foord off and didn't really have anything left on the bench that would be likely to help break chelsea down and relieve pressure on arsenal's backline. while in comparison, even having made a half-time sub there was an ominous sense that chelsea did still have the options available to step things up another gear at any moment which proved to be the case in the end.
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