Arsenal reduced the gap to a point on Manchester City who were surprisingly beaten 2-1 at Everton, while Chelsea were held to a 1-1 draw at Leicester.
Chelsea are now seven points ahead of Arsenal and six ahead of City going into the Christmas break and are unlikely to be stopped unless they lose at least two games in the remaining 12 games.
Second place is definitely achievable for Arsenal according to the League table:
Due to the short time between the Champions League and the league matches, Renée Slegers had to rotate her team for the first time since taking over as interim coach.
After making changes at Vålerenga, she selected the same XI that started and beat Aston Villa 4-0 last weekend: van Domselaar; Fox, Williamson, Catley, McCabe; Cooney-Cross, Caldentey; Foord, Maanum, Mead; Russian.
It wasn’t the best game and the interim manager was clear in her assessment during the press conference: “We are critical as a team, I spoke to the girls, we are critical about things that we want to do better but we are very aware that the three points were the most important today,” she said.
Alessia Russo scored from a Katie McCabe corner while Mariona Caldentey hit the post after Russo was fouled by Bonner. Neither team was clinical on the day, hitting the woodwork or shooting off target. It ended 1-0, but it could also have ended 3-2 for Arsenal.
There was a very interesting comment about the double pivot used as originally Slegers used Little-Wälti until both were injured as the midfield balance the players give to the team: “All the players are different but Kim Little and Lia Walti are more conservative. Most of the time Kyra and Mariona are more courageous and move forward and all four of them are very important and we just have to piece the puzzle together to figure out what kind of qualities we need.
Cooney-Cross and Caldentey haven’t found the right balance unlike Aston Villa and we’ve seen the introduction of Kim Little bring a calmer approach to central midfield. Arsenal are lucky to have so many good midfielders with Pelova returning soon and even Kühl, who is unfortunately underutilized.
You can’t win every match by playing flashy football, you have to win them by getting a result and that was the case yesterday. It is important to note that the match against Bayern will be Arsenal’s 20th match of the 2024/25 season, while WSL teams not participating in the UWCL will only have played 13 matches before the break Christmas. This therefore makes a huge difference in terms of physical condition and fatigue level.
Attention turns to the final match of the Champions League group and only a victory will be enough if Arsenal are to go top of the group. The group winners will face the group runners-up without any country restrictions, so Arsenal could end up drawing against Chelsea or Manchester City. The other qualified teams are Barcelona, Lyon, Real Madrid and Wolfsburg.
Lyon are Group A winners, so beating Bayern would mean avoiding them in the quarter-finals. Arsenal also have the chance to play last in all group games, meaning the club will know before kick-off which teams will be the winners and runners-up and will therefore be able to ‘pick’ who they want to avoid in the quarter. -finals.