There was not a showpiece WSL fixture over the weekend but, even without Chelsea’s postponed match against Manchester United, there were still plenty of fireworks.
Brighton & Hove Albion beat Aston Villa 4-2 and Liverpool edged past Tottenham in a 3-2 win. However, at the Emirates, it was not just the drizzle that extinguished any pyrotechnics as a toiling Arsenal side drew 0-0 with Everton.
This feels like a more even league than ever, a point backed up by the early table. Everton’s draw and Crystal Palace’s 2-0 win over Leicester City means that every team in the WSL has picked up at least one point from the first three weeks. Last year, Bristol City and Aston Villa needed five and six games respectively to get off the mark.
Even for Villa and the other three teams with one point this season, their performances have shown they can compete. The flip side is that these teams will take points off each other, which could allow the top four to pull away. Game by game, the league has a new level of unpredictability.
Arsenal fail to fire against Everton
In this fluctuating WSL season, at least one thing has remained predictable: Arsenal’s attack. Hope is evaporating that last season’s issues would be left behind as Arsenal followed up last week’s laboured 1-0 win over Leicester City with a 0-0 draw against Everton.
Many fans and pundits blamed Arsenal’s attacking problems last season on an inability to finish their chances but their goals tally matched their figure for expected goals (xG, a measure of the quality of chances a team creates). They created the second-most xG in the WSL, averaging 2.4 per 90, compared to Chelsea’s 2.6 and Manchester City’s 2.1.
The concern with this weekend’s 0-0 draw — the first time they had failed to score against Everton since 2009 — will be the lack of meaningful chances created. Arsenal’s xG of 0.73 was their lowest against Everton since Opta began collecting the data in 2017. It was also lower than all but one of their WSL matches last season (their 3-1 away loss to Chelsea).
“In the first half, we played with too little intent, we moved the ball too slowly,” said manager Jonas Eidevall in his post-match press conference.
“When we don’t move the ball quickly, it is hard to break down a side like Everton who prioritise having players behind the ball. In the second half, we have the intent and create momentum but we do it too late.”
The problem for Eidevall is that he has said all of this before. It was the narrative after their losses to West Ham United and Liverpool last season, and they had similar struggles in the first leg of their Champions League qualifier against Hacken.
Arsenal have two crucial games this week as they go away to Bayern Munich in their first Champions League group-stage match before hosting Chelsea at the Emirates. Eidevall has garnered a reputation for excelling in the bigger games — they took nine points from four games against the top two last season — but the pressure will be on. A slow start 12 months ago meant they were basically never in the title race. They cannot afford a repeat.
Rotation key for Manchester City
Keeping players fresh will be Gareth Taylor’s biggest challenge at City this season. Last season, he made fewer substitutions than any manager in the league and eight players started 16 or more matches. With City back in the Champions League group stage for the first time since 2020, Taylor will need to use his full squad if his team are going to compete in four competitions.
Their 2-0 win over West Ham suggested he is more comfortable rotating his line-up. He made five changes from the 1-0 win over Brighton as a home game against Champions League holders Barcelona looms on Wednesday. Striker Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw was rested while midfielder Jill Roord got her first start since she was sidelined with an anterior cruciate ligament injury in January.
Taylor’s changes showed City’s depth and his confidence in the wider team. England winger Chloe Kelly has fallen out of favour in recent months but she made her first league start of the season, while 21-year-old Laura Blindkilde-Brown was in City’s WSL starting XI for the first time.
It helped that Taylor could make changes while still relying on a handful of stalwarts. Lauren Hemp got the opener to become the youngest player (24 years and 60 days) to reach 50 WSL goals and Mary Fowler scored their second — but as the season goes on, the focus will increasingly fall on Japan midfielder Yui Hasegawa. City do not have an obvious replacement for Hasegawa, who is essential to how they play. Taylor’s early flexibility is positive but there are still areas of the pitch they will have to monitor closely.
A worrying repeat for Villa?
Aston Villa’s performances have been better than their points tally suggests but manager Robert de Pauw will be disappointed that they conceded practically identical goals in successive games.
Last week, it looked like they had completed a late comeback win against Tottenham, having scored in the 78th and 88th minutes to lead 2-1. However, that hard work was undone when Bethany England nodded in an equaliser for Spurs in the 96th minute.
The goal was created by a right-to-left diagonal from outside the penalty area to the byline.
A first-time cross from Amanda Nilden allowed England to easily evade her markers and score.
On Saturday lunchtime, Villa went 1-0 up against Brighton but within two minutes, they conceded a similar equaliser. Like the build-up to England’s goal, Brighton had the ball outside the area to the right side.
Centre-back Maria Thorisdottir was more advanced than Molly Bartrip was for Tottenham but just like Bartrip, Thorisdottir sent it towards the back post, where Poppy Pattinson’s first-time cross enabled Nikita Parris to bundle the ball across the line.
It turned out this flurry of excitement was just the amuse-bouche to a 4-2 win for Brighton that saw both sides have players sent off and score penalties. For De Pauw, the lingering image will be of the copycat goal as Villa look to turn positive performances into points.
(Top photo: Arsenal’s Alessia Russo against Everton; Ryan Pierse/The FA via Getty Images)
