“She’s made my life easy.” Leah Williamson praises her Arsenal Women Centre Back partner

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·22 December 2024

“She’s made my life easy.” Leah Williamson praises her Arsenal Women Centre Back partner

Our Arsenal women’s defense has been a source of pride over the last few months. Suddenly, we can’t help but rave about them.

William Saliba and Gabriel, our Gunners’ central defenders, have been the dream center-back pairing. As solid as they have been, teams look at their partnership with admiration for what a unit Mikel Arteta has assembled.

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Well, our Gunner women seem to have finally found the perfect defensive pairing too. In an unlikely Leah Williamson and Steph Catley partnership, the Arsenal women have been in great defensive form over the last 11 games. They’ve kept 7 clean sheets and conceded only 5 goals while going unbeaten.

Steph and Leah have complemented each other well. While Leah has evolved into a deep-lying playmaker defender from a dribbling defender, Matildas star Catley has had a seamless switch from left-back to central defense.

Steph already spoke about how they’ve managed to be defensively solid, saying it is a team effort. Leah now has touched on why she and the Australian defender have clicked as a pairing. She told DAZN,

“I think it’s been great. I suppose we’ve both been around for a while now, so we just play to each other’s strengths. Steph’s a solid player; it’s nice whenever you play next to a center-back that can cover you as well. It allows you to be front-footed and play like that, so it’s been good. We actually have a joke about our communication because we talk to each other way too much. But like I say, Steph’s an unbelievable player, she’s made my life easy.”

Coming into this season, who’d have thought Steph Catley and Leah Williamson would become the defensive pairing we depend on? But that partnership has saved our season—a season that some felt was going to go down the drain after that 2-0 loss to Chelsea in early October.

Renee Slegers needs to be lauded for her bold tactical calls. Her boldness has been something to admire. I doubt Eidevall would have had the guts to play Catley in central defense.

What are your thoughts?

Michelle M

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