Arsenal begin WCL defence with wobble after Dumornay double for OL Lyonnes | OneFootball

Arsenal, the European champions, began their title defence with defeat against their semi-final opponents last season, Lyonnes, in a thrilling encounter in north London.

Renée Slegers’s team had taken an early lead in style through Alessia Russo against the tournament’s most decorated side, but two goals in seven minutes from Melchie Dumornay, courtesy of some questionable Arsenal defending, gave the visiting side all three points.

A fourth game without a win is a blow for the Gunners, with draws against Manchester United and Aston Villa followed by defeat against Manchester City in the league before this meeting – but this was not a performance to be ashamed of, far from it, and moving forward they can draw on their campaign of comebacks all the way to winning their second European title last season.

“Worried is not the right word but of course we’re not happy with it,” Slegers said of their run. “It does something to a group. The important thing is we manage it really well. Last season shows that when it starts clicking we know how good we are.”

The grim reality is that Meadow Park is no longer fit to host Arsenal matches. Despite investment to have the venue meet Uefa’s minimum standards, the facilities are nowhere near good enough for Champions League football. That does not stop it being a powerful cauldron, though, with the Gunners’ hardcore fans rocking the North Bank and leading the thunder of noise through the open ground as they kickstarted their title defence.

“We’ve got to act like we’re the champions and people are coming after us to win it off us,” Steph Catley said beforehand.

If that was the energy in training and in the dressing room it spilled on to the pitch in style. Arsenal were up for this game. Very up for it. Beth Mead and Chloe Kelly slotted either side of their England teammate Russo, in two of five changes from the weekend, and it was Mead who drove the ball into the box for the opening goal, dancing through the middle before clipping the ball to Russo, who fired past Christiane Endler.

Arsenal were soon punished, though: the goalkeeper Daphne van Domselaar fluffed her pass to Catley, landing it straight at the feet of Dumornay, the midfielder forcing a save before rolling the rebound into the empty net. It was calamitous and five minutes later the visitors had the lead against the team who beat them 5-3 on aggregate in the semi-finals last season.

The Lyonnes press mercilessly hustled away possession in the Arsenal third and the ball fell to Dumornay, who fired in from the edge of the box, with Van Domselaar, somewhat inexplicably, rooted to the spot.

“The motivation is always there, I always like to adjust the mental preparation,” the manager, Jonatan Giráldez, said when asked about the impact of the semi-final meeting last season. “We can’t forget what happened last season, but we need to use it in the right way.”

Slegers said: “Errors happen from time to time but if they happen too often of course there’s something there. It looks silly from the outside but it’s not that all of a sudden they can’t pass that ball, it can be something intangible that you can’t put your finger on sometimes. We will analyse it.”

The problem Arsenal have is that they looked nervous defensively whenever the dynamic front three of Kadidiatou Diani, Marie-Antoinette Katoto and Tabitha Chawinga broke. The absence of Leah Williamson’s leadership qualities – in addition to her composure and vision on the ball – is being felt more and more as each game comes and goes.

The frenetic energy of the first half was carried into the second. There was no heroic comeback, but the battle raged until the end as Arsenal fought to get something from the game and Giráldez’s side sought to kill off those hopes.

Defeat is not a total disaster for Arsenal, who endured a bruising 5-2 loss against Bayern Munich in their opening group‑stage game last season before going on to win Europe’s premier competition for the first time in 18 years.

That defeat contributed to Jonas Eidevall’s exit and Slegers’s temporary promotion that was made permanent three months later. The task, though, is to figure out the causes of an alarming slide, with their winless run extended to four games and the team needing to do something about it quickly.

“What we know about this team is they’ve gone through hard times before and they’ve always come back,” Slegers said.

Header image: [Photograph: John Walton/PA]