Adding Layers: Thoughts on Arsenal Women’s pre-season friendlies

After Saturday’s 4-3 friendly defeat to Tottenham, I wrote up some thoughts (NOT conclusions) about the game. Naturally, Wednesday’s 2-0 friendly win over West Ham has added a little more data to the pool and added some context to my early thoughts about the Spurs game.

For instance, Steph Catley was captain for the Spurs friendly ahead of Katie McCabe, which prompted me to ask Renee Slegers whether there had been further changes to the leadership group. That may still be an open question but Catley played the full 90 minutes in that game with McCabe coming off at half-time (which would have been preconceived) so it’s likely that Catley was made captain for administrative reasons. Because when Kim Little came off against West Ham, McCabe wore the armband.

I also wrote about the goalkeeping group, with new signing Anekke Borbe starting the Spurs game ahead of Zinsberger. On Wednesday, van Domselaar was restored in goal, Zinsberger was on the bench and Borbe not in the squad. I still think the fact that Zinsberger saw no action in these two friendlies might be a portent for her entering the season as third choice but that’s certainly still an open question.

With the number of personnel and positional changes across both games, I think Slegers was deliberately very experimental. Few players will complete 90 minutes in a pre-season game so part of that is forced, of course. Arsenal also play West Ham on 12 September and I think they wanted to give very little away on Wednesday.

I imagine Sunday’s intrasquad friendly at the training ground will basically be the LCL starting line-up against the subs + any academy players still not quite released on loan. In fact, I expect loan deals for players such as Vivienne Lia not to be completed until this BCD friendly takes place. Slegers told Arseblog News after the game that experimenting and adding variety to Arsenal’s game was a big part of the plan for the Spurs and West Ham games.

‘We tried to play the player’s qualities and we have really good foundation in the way we play, but we always want to develop because the game grows fast and we have to come with new things all the time. We want to stay unpredictable. So we try to add as many layers as possible to the foundation that we already have.’ And I think this is one of my biggest curiosities across the two games.

Arsenal scored five goals against Spurs and West Ham and nearly all of them emanated from moves of three passes or fewer. Pelova and Foord scored from direct OTT passes from defenders against Spurs (the other was an own goal). Against West Ham, Frida Maanum’s first goal comes from a high turnover, Hinds intercepts, passes to Nighswonger, who hits a first time cross to Maanum who scores.

FRIDA GRABS A DOUBLE IN HAMMERS WIN! | Arsenal Women 2-0 West Ham United | Pre-season

Frida’s second goal on Wednesday is from a swift counter-attack from a West Ham corner. I suspect Arsenal are not looking to transform their style of play; but it does strike me that they must have been working on quick attacks and transition moments over the summer.

One of the biggest curiosities that I, and a lot of Arsenal fans, have ahead of next season is whether we will see increased use of the squad this season. Last season, Slegers inherited a fix up job where player confidence was low and Arsenal had made slow starts to their WSL and UWCL seasons. There was less room for rotation and Slegers had to build up her principles with the team.

Arsenal have a sizeable squad and at the end of last season, players like Wubben-Moy, Walti, Kafaji (now out on loan), Pelova, Nighswonger and Cooney-Cross found minutes difficult to come by. With the exception of Kafaji, all those players remain, so we can assume that Slegers wants them. In the Spurs and West Ham games we saw Cooney-Cross play the majority of the minutes as the six and Walti’s recent surgery, as well as a full pre-season gives KCC a great opportunity to claim that position.

Pelova has largely played higher up in Frida Maanum’s position and there are certainly minutes available there, Maanum was essentially unchallenged in that role last season. If Slegers sees Pelova playing as a 10 a lot, then Arsenal have two very different types of number 10 at their disposal and what we may begin to see across the squad is a ‘horses for courses’ approach based on greater flexibility of personnel and approach.

Arsenal currently have four senior wide options for the first time in over five years and all four players can play on both wings (Nighswonger was also used as a left-winger in pre-season). The team already had two very different styles of centre-forward they used relatively interchangeably last season. The return to fitness of Wubben-Moy and Codina, as well as the continuing emergence of Katie Reid, give Arsenal plenty of centre-back options. Hinds, Fox, Nighswonger and McCabe allow four senior full-back options, even if there is a clear left-sided bias there.

In short, Arsenal have a big squad with a lot of different profiles and they have not moved on some of those players who were kicking their heels on the bench during the second half of last season. The opportunity and motive appears to be there to adopt a more flexible approach to team selection and indeed to tactics, where the option to be a little more direct or a little cuter when necessary all exist. I really hope it plays out that way and Slegers finds that sweet spot between using the options available, varying threats and retaining cohesion.

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