Arsenal risk being left behind in WSL as transfer failings widen gap to Chelsea | Suzanne Wrack | OneFootball

It may seem odd to label a transfer window which included the recruitment of an Olympic gold medallist and the loan signing of the player who scored the winning goal at Euro 2022 a failure, but that is the nature of the world in which Arsenal are now operating.

The issue is less about who they did sign – Jenna Nighswonger and Chloe Kelly being shrewd additions – and more about who they didn’t, and the perceived absence of a coherent recruitment strategy.

Four days before the window closed the USA centre-back Naomi Girma, a player described by Emma Hayes as “the best defender I’ve ever seen”, was presented to Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge before their game against the Gunners. Four days later, on deadline day, Keira Walsh was also a Blue, the England international having joined Chelsea from Barcelona for £440,000.

Why is this relevant to Arsenal? Because, at different stages, both players looked like they might be heading to north London rather than west London.

Chelsea are attractive, their five back-to-back Women’s Super League titles a clear reflection of their domestic dominance. They are serial winners and are investing heavily as they hunt for an elusive first European title to extend that dominance beyond these shores. Few teams can rival their offer. Arsenal certainly can’t in terms of silverwarebut, as the most decorated women’s team in England, they have legacy. They also have a large, active and engaged fanbase that is the envy of the WSL.

The reality is that had Arsenal wanted Girma and/or Walsh enough, they could have fought Chelsea for them and potentially beaten them to the players. Instead, their rivals are further strengthened.

How serious are the Gunners? Chelsea paid £440,000 for Walsh, a player for whom Arsenal are understood to have submitted a world-record bid in September, reportedly for more than double this month’s fee. They were supposedly priced out of the running for Girma with Chelsea making her the world’s first $1m (£890,000) player.

In addition, in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, the former manager Jonas Eidevall revealed they had to choose between offering the WSL record goalscorer Vivianne Miedema a new contract or bringing in the Barcelona forward Mariona Caldentey last year, with the decision to let a club legend go rupturing his relationship with fans.

“You have a limited budget that you have to deal with and we had the opportunity to sign Mariona Caldentey or extend Vivianne Miedema’s contract,” he said. “Then you have to choose either or but it’s not a decision that you then stand at a press conference and talk about and say: ‘We had to choose between two players.’ The reality is that we couldn’t afford both.”

Except they could afford both. They could only not afford both, or Walsh or Girma, in the confines of the budget the club has set for the women’s team. As of May last year, Arsenal sit 10th on the Forbes list of the most valuable football clubs in the world with a value of $2.6bn (£2.1bn). The reported annual wage of the men’s captain and highest paid player, Martin Ødegaard, could pay the salaries of the entire Arsenal women setup (staff and players) twice over. The £42m fee paid for summer recruit Riccardo Calafiori could buy Girma, the most expensive player in the history of the women’s game, 47 times over and leave change.

Chelsea are choosing to invest heavily to be competitive at the very top of the game, and Arsenal are not. There can be no excuses, wringing of hands or bemoaning of bank balances.

The Walsh situation is also not the first example of a seemingly chaotic bidding process. Arsenal’s pursuit of the England goalkeeper Mary Earps became a game of cat and mouse with Manchester United before the Gunners eventually looked elsewhere. They came away victorious in 2023, when a rejected record bid in January for Alessia Russo resulted in her recruitment on a free transfer the following July, but this felt an anomaly – throw enough darts at a board and you’ll eventually hit the triple 20.

So, who is responsible? Eidevall bemoaned the lack of a women’s sporting director following his exit. “One of the parts that I found draining, and another reason for me leaving, was the lack of a sports director to work with daily,” he said. “I felt like I lacked time to be anything else but business. Whenever I spoke to anyone at Arsenal, it was because I had an agenda. I had zero conversations that were just: ‘How are you?’ It made me feel some kind of small void.”

Arguably, the responsibility sits higher than the manager, with the head of women’s football, Clare Wheatley, and at the decision-making levels of the club. The desire to go all in on the women’s team just doesn’t seem to be there.

A single goal may have separated Arsenal and Chelsea in their recent league game against each other, but the gap between the clubs is big and growing. If Arsenal want to add to a legacy that is more and more distant, then they need to be the ones setting the standard, raising the bar and inflating the market, instead of meekly responding to the standards set by others.

Header image: [Composite: Guardian Picture Desk]