Weekend Warm-Up: Beers, Eidevall's exit and upset opportunities
Flo Lloyd-Hughes gets you ready for this weekend's action and highlights some things to look out for.
Welcome back to Weekend Warm-Up, the key to your WSL weekend.
Don’t forget we are hosting our first live event on 3 November in Haggerston, east London. We’re teaming up with the great crew at Baller FC for a special WSL watch party. It’s going to be a ‘Soccer Saturday’ sort of day. Our writers will be there chatting about Manchester United-Arsenal and then we will go ‘around the grounds’ to talk about the other fixtures of the day. Expect analysis, darts and lots of fun. Tickets are free so don’t miss out.
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Could beers in the stands be back?
I was at the Leaders sports business conference in London this week which is one of the biggest industry events in the calendar.
Like most conferences, there were quite a few stuffy talks about random technology I’d never heard of, but some of the biggest conversations and most interesting chats were about women’s sport.
I’m going to do a proper round up piece from the event on The Cutback soon, but I wanted to discuss one of the big news lines from Thursday.
In a conversation with Maria Raga, former Chief Executive of Depop, Nikki Doucet, chief executive of Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL), the organisation in charge of the WSL and Championship, revealed that there will be a trial of alcohol in the stands in the second-tier.
The details are pretty sparse at the moment and it’s going to be complicated to sort out as legally alcohol hasn’t been allowed in view of the pitch from the Premier League down to the National League since 1985. But a trial has been mentioned before by Tracey Crouch, the former Conservative MP who led the football fan review in 2021. She suggested a possible trial in League Two and National League but it never materialised.
I would love to see something tested, especially in the smaller women’s football grounds. I think it would be a really unique offering for women’s football and I think given the existing fanbase, atmosphere and vibes at the grounds, I don’t believe it would change anything. Families could still come and enjoy a drink like they would at any other sporting event in the country…..apart from football.
We’ll have to keep an eye on it because I imagine it’s a slow process. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on the idea, it’s definitely one that splits opinion.
Eidevall’s exit
The biggest story of the week has been Jonas Eidevall’s departure from Arsenal. It was announced on Tuesday morning after he handed in his resignation the day before. It came as a surprise given Arsenal had two games this week and it seemed like if any change was going to happen it was going to be in the international break. But Eidevall ended up making the first move.
Max Radwan has written a brilliant piece detailing the ups and downs of Eidevall’s tenure and looking how it all fell apart in the past two weeks.
Arsenal won their midweek Uefa Women’s Champions League group game against Valerenga, beating the Norwegian side 4-1 under interim coach Renee Slegers. There wasn’t much to highlight in the performance that was any different to what Eidevall had been doing with Arsenal in the last few weeks. It was the same starting line up as the Chelsea defeat, apart from Lotte Wubben-Moy who missed the game through concussion. It’s not surprising Slegers stuck to the usual system given she had 24 hours to prepare the team and the game plan would have been all set up before Eidevall departed. It will be interesting if we see any changes at West Ham on Sunday.
Dagenham hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for Arsenal in the last few seasons. They lost 2-1 to West Ham there last season and had a really stale 0-0 draw the year before.
It’s vital Arsenal put in a good performance and continue to rebuild their season and win back fans.
Upset weekend?
This weekend the WSL fixture schedule may be lacking some top of the table clashes but it still has some very interesting match ups.
We’ve got plenty of mid-table face offs and some historic Barclays games.
Brighton - Manchester United on Saturday should be really interesting given both teams have got off to brilliant starts this season. United are yet to face a team in the top four and given Brighton’s position in the table right now, this match is a real test to see who is really going to be challenging the status quo this season.
It’s also a revenge game for Nikita Parris who was at United for two seasons and has really sparked life into the Brighton attack. She is someone who loves playing with a point to prove and I wonder if that will bring out something special in Saturday’s performance.
Also keep an eye on Man City - Villa (always a Barclays chaos classic)) and Chelsea - Tottenham.
Let me know what games you’re watching this weekend. See you on Monday for the next edition of my newsletter What Happened.