The number of goals scored per game in this weekend’s WSL matches diminished game by game as the weekend wore on.
Arsenal started us off with a 5-0 win over Brighton which Manchester City followed up half an hour later on Friday with a 4-0 win over Tottenham. Chelsea won 3-0 at Liverpool before there was a 1-1 draw between Crystal Palace and Everton. West Ham eked out a 1-0 win over Leicester City before, you guessed it… a 0-0 draw between Manchester United and Aston Villa wrapped up our sixth game.
An amusing statistical anomaly ultimately, but it is those first three high-scoring matches that caught the eye and emphasised the continued gap between the top three teams and the rest. Even with seven gameweeks gone, and a fairly catastrophic start to the season from Arsenal, it feels almost certain that, come May, Chelsea, City and Arsenal will finish in the top three.
Admittedly, Arsenal are still only in fourth place right now but their 5-0 win over Brighton, who sit one point above them in third, emphasised how strong this side can be. It has left open the question as to whether interim manager Renee Slegers might be in line to take the job over full time.
Little has been known about Arsenal’s managerial pursuit so far other than that former City boss Nick Cushing is their first choice, and he has explicitly claimed not to be interested. The club clearly feel comfortable with Slegers taking over for whatever portion of time is necessary for them to make the right selection but with three wins from three so far, is it possible that she could end up in charge?
The reality is that Slegers has not made any radical departures from the system that former manager Jonas Eidevall was using. Arsenal undoubtedly performed well on Friday night but Brighton left their defence wide open for them to take advantage of with a listless out-of-possession performance.
But speaking after the match, Arsenal winger Beth Mead, who scored the opener, said she had given the team “confidence”. When asked whether she was thinking about the role long term, Slegers assured the post-match press conference that she was not.
“I enjoy it,” she said. “I enjoyed my role before as well. I want to try and develop individuals and the team as well. For whoever comes next, I will really work hard to create a good setup, and that’s important. But the most important thing is that we are doing all we can to get results in this block.”
Slegers, who was assistant coach before taking the interim role, did say before the match that she was hoping to stay at Arsenal in the future: “I enjoy being part of the club, I enjoy working with the players. I enjoyed the role that I had before I had to step in and take this role temporarily.”
While Arsenal were back finding their shooting boots, City were destroying another mid-table side in Tottenham. Robert Vilahamn’s team have become something of a punching bag for City; last season, the team put out an apology after they were beaten 7-0. The fact that Bunny Shaw scored within 30 seconds showed that little had changed a year on. Shaw went on to score a hat-trick. She became the first player to score a hat-trick three times against one team in the WSL.
Chelsea might have had the opposite relationship with playing Liverpool away — they had not won there in three seasons — but they also brushed them aside 3-0. It meant that Sonia Bompastor continued her impressive winning run with Chelsea, becoming the first manager to win their first four away matches in the league.
With goals from Mayra Ramirez, Guro Reiten and Aggie Beever-Jones, this was a more cohesive Chelsea performance than had been seen so far. They had the same transitional bite but with more control when necessary, and despite Liverpool pressing hard in the second half, they struggled to create any clear-cut opportunities.
Given the assured performances of the traditional top three, United looked like the main losers from this weekend. Their 0-0 draw with winless Aston Villa was their third in the row, and, despite manager Marc Skinner’s protestations, was far below what should be expected from a team hoping to make a Champions League spot.
Villa have not been as bad this season as results have suggested. Their expected goal difference per 90 is 0.07 ranking them fourth in the league, behind only City, Chelsea and Arsenal. That comes on the back of a match where they dominated United for large portions of the game and will be rueing an inability to score. They repeatedly played through United’s midfield with ease, as Arsenal had done the weekend before.
But even if Villa’s league position belies their ability, these are still games that United should be dominating from a performance aspect. Skinner justified the performance by citing the recent construction of his team.
“We’re still a new team, believe it or not,” he told Sky Sports after the match. “We’ve got a brand new midfield. We’ve got people coming in. We’ve got a new forward. We’ve got lots of different changes again. We’re still unbeaten.”
Skinner is in his fourth season in charge of United, which means the excuses are becoming very familiar. There has undoubtedly been a lot of churn around United, not all of it solely down to Skinner, but he has repeatedly struggled to integrate new players into his side. If that is to be the excuse, then it also prompts the question: is that not part of the job?
Of the starting XI against Aston Villa, three — Elisabeth Terland, Dominique Janssen and Celin Bizet — were not at the club in some form last year. A player like Grace Clinton was not part of the squad, but it was presumably Skinner’s own choice to send her out on loan. Regardless, with seven players having started all six games of the season so far, you would think any issues of newness might have been overcome.
Instead, the same comments come out in rotation and United end up watching early positive results against smaller sides drift away when it comes to facing bigger ones. Arsenal’s poor start should have been United’s big opportunity to push back towards the top.
Instead of that, the second-placed finish from two years ago looks further away than ever.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
