Arsenal women season review: All roads lead to Lisbon, part 2 | OneFootball

The Arsenal Women season block by block.

This is the second part of our review featuring block 2 and 3 of the season that led to the winter break. If you missed it, part 1 is available here.

Second block: 3 November to 21 November

Renee Slegers started her interim period as manager with two wins, and in block two simply tried to stabilise the team. It meant keeping the same starting XI as much as possible. There were five games in that block, and it yielded one 1-1 draw away to Manchester United, and two wins against Brighton (5-0) and Spurs (3-0) in the League and two wins against Juventus in the Champions League home and away.

Brighton was a key win at the time as they were ahead of the Gunners and third in the table, while the two Juventus wins ensured there was now a good chance to make it to the Champions League knock-out stage. Hurtig’s 88th minute winner against Juventus was a key moment in the season.

What we saw in that five-game cycle: Slegers used the same defensive six of  Fox, Williamson, Catley, McCabe; Little, Wälti to stabilise a team that needed consistency and balance defensively. Introducing and consolidating the new position for Catley as left centre-back to give more attacking options to the team for passing, overlapping and stepping into midfield in certain situations.

Russo, Maanum and Foord all started the five games while Mead and Caldentey shared the starts as Caldentey missed a game through sickness and came on as a sub in the next one.

It is interesting to note that from block 2 the main starters that played in the Champions League final were already there, with the exception of Kelly who was sitting on the bench at that time at Manchester City.

Third block: 8 December to 18 December

Renee Slegers was still tagged as interim manager at this point but was building up her case to get the job full time with her results. There were four games in the third block, and they yielded two League wins against Villa and Liverpool and also two wins in the Champions League group stage to win the group.

The Bayern game ended up a 3-2 win and was controversially played at Meadow Park rather than at Emirates Stadium as the men team had a League Cup home game at the same time. This will clearly be a problem in the future as the women’s team makes the Emirates Stadium their home.

It was another turning point in the season as Arsenal came back from 2-1 down and got the winner late in the game with a Caldentey penalty. It gave the team a lot of belief that they could turn a game around against anyone.

In term of squad management, Renee Slegers decided to mix things up a lot more mainly due to injuries to her double pivot. Wälti missed the whole block due to injury and Little missed the first two games. It meant Cooney-Cross got her first chance under Slegers and she started all four games.

At Valerengå away, Slegers did rotate many players giving Katie Reid her first senior start in a Champions League game. Fringe players got a game including Kafaji, Wienroither, Kühl, and Godfrey. Among the other trials, Slegers played Russo/Blackstenius up top as a pair twice in that block.

By the Christmas break, Renee Slegers was still unbeaten with ten wins and one draw and finished her interim stint in a very good position to be awarded the job as the players rallied around her and the fans backed her up strongly too.