Five-star Arsenal hammer Tottenham in WSL derby as Chloe Kelly makes return | OneFootball

Renée Slegers’s final message to Chloe Kelly before she came off the bench, an hour into Arsenal’s 5-0 rout of rudderless Tottenham, was simple: “This is your welcome back in an Arsenal shirt and it is a very special occasion, so enjoy it.”

Kelly’s emotional second debut for the Gunners followed her deadline‑day loan move from Manchester City, after an acrimonious end to her time at the club.

“She’s passionate as a person. You can see she’s smiling a lot and is very happy with where she’s at,” Slegers said. “It’s important that you have players in a good place, feeling good and feeling motivated. That is when you get the most out of yourself and we can keep building with Chloe.”

The bar denied Kelly a dream return late on, but it mattered little. In front of an Emirates Stadium crowd of 56,784, Arsenal asserted their north London derby dominance, securing their ninth win in 11 league games against their local rivals.

Slegers had promised that they would make things “uncomfortable” for Tottenham at a packed-out stadium and they delivered. In the first half the Gunners kept Spurs pinned in their half, dominating with more than 72% possession, 15 shots to Spurs’ two and 31 touches in the opposition box to Tottenham’s two.

Slegers rested five players for the defeat of London City Lionesses in the FA Cup fifth round last weekend but the big news was on the bench, with Kelly prepared to make her second debut after being cup tied in the FA Cup and ineligible to play against her parent club Manchester City in the league and League Cup semi-finals following her move in January. There was a roar from the crowd as a grinning Kelly limbered up early in the first half, 2,815 days since her previous game for Arsenal before she joined Everton on loan in search of first‑team football.

The home side’s press was relentless, the Australian midfielder Kyra Cooney-Cross particularly energetic, forcing turnover after turnover and providing the assist for the opener. It took 15 minutes for Arsenal to make the breakthrough against a Tottenham side that seems to have lost its way this season – Cooney‑Cross delivered from the right and a glancing header from Alessia Russo deflected off the thigh of the defender Clare Hunt and in. It was a deserved opener, and they should have been three or four up by the time the second goal arrived. Mariona Caldentey was the provider, her shot blocked by Hunt only for the Spain international to leap forward and rifle the loose ball past the goalkeeper Lize Kop.

Robert Vilahamn had stressed before kick-off the importance of Spurs being strong defensively, and there could be a modicum of solace in the two-goal margin, with the home side arguably complacent in front of goal. By the hour, though, Arsenal had doubled their tally, first a Frida Maanum effort took a heavy deflection off a beleaguered Hunt and sailed in and then Russo fired low into the far corner.

The stadium rose soon after, as Kelly was introduced to the pitch for her first minutes in red since 2017. That was the same year Arsenal beat Tottenham 10-0 in the FA Cup with Kelly on the scoresheet. Since then, the chasm between the two sides had seemingly narrowed, a 1-0 defeat of Arsenal in December 2023 giving Spurs a first Women’s Super League win against the Gunners. However, that was perhaps a false dawn. At the Emirates Stadium the visitors struggled to escape their own half, a first of only two shots on target coming in the 65th minute when Drew Spence’s header from a corner was palmed away by Daphne van Domselaar, before Emily Fox added Arsenal’s fifth in style with a rising long-range effort.

“Most teams will lose away at Arsenal, but if you lose 5-0 that’s not good,” Vilahamn said. “You can look at why you play too many short passes and try to have this buildup. We want to develop that game, but we need to find the right balance. To find the right level with that is to be brave. When we don’t succeed, of course I’m sitting here looking a bit stupid, I get that. That’s the part of my journey with this team and what we want to do so I’m still going to do that, but I’m also going to analyse what we can do better because I’m not going to be stupid – but I also want to make sure we have an identity that we follow.”

Header image: [Photograph: Matthew Childs/Action Images/Reuters]