Iman Beney sinks Arsenal in thriller to take Manchester City second in WSL | OneFootball

After finishing outside the European places twice in the past three, trophyless seasons, are Manchester City back? With this pivotal victory and, significantly, this performance, it appears they might well be. They moved up to second in the Women’s Super League thanks to a late strike from Iman Beney that clinched a hard-fought win against Arsenal.

It was a game that started poorly, but turned into a five-goal thriller and the result was priceless for the hosts. Arsenal, who dropped points at home to Aston Villa last time out and are now winless in three WSL games, slip five points behind the leaders, Chelsea, after five games, while Manchester City are a point behind the defending champions thanks to Beney’s finish into the bottom corner.

It is not the sort of form Arsenal would want to take in to the start of the defence of their Champions League title, when they host OL Lyonnes on Tuesday, but there will now be a bit of pressure building around the club before that difficult-looking game against the eight-time European champions. It was nearly a very different story, though, as it looked as though Chloe Kelly had come back to haunt her former club by scoring an 83rd-minute equaliser.

Kelly felt frozen out of the Manchester City team last winter before joining Arsenal; she pointed to the badge on her shirt as she celebrated her leveller in front of the travelling supporters.

Manchester City, who have now won four consecutive WSL games since their opening loss at Chelsea, are beginning to click into gear under their new head coach, Andrée Jeglertz. “The game was won by us keeping on believing,” he said. “[At 2-2] there was no player thinking ‘now we just need to protect this result’. That is not happening in this group. This group is still believing that we will create scoring chances and we will win the game.”

Their belief was also clear in a first half they dominated, with Vivianne Miedema having a header well saved against her former club. They took the lead when Khadija Shaw headed in Kerstin Casparij’s cross, after great work from Aoba Fujino to release Casparij down the right.

The hosts should have doubled their lead when Shaw was played through on goal, but she hesitated too long and when her shot was diverted to Casparij to put the ball in the net, the Netherlands international was offside. Arsenal drew level moments into the second half when Mariona Caldentey lashed in a classy strike.

Poor defending at a set piece, though, undid Arsenal for the second game running as they did not deal with Alex Greenwood’s corner and Casparij was able to bundle the ball in to make it 2-1. Arsenal upped their game in response and looked as if they had rescued a point with Kelly’s clinical strike into the corner, but Beney was ruthless on the counterattack after Shaw’s knockdown.

The worry for Arsenal will be that last season the champions, Chelsea, dropped six points in the entire campaign whereas Arsenal have already dropped seven. “We are very disappointed with the result,” the Arsenal head coach, Renée Slegers, said. “We know how much strength we have in the squad and when we need to come back from things, we know that we can. We all believe it will come, if we keep working really hard.”

Header image: [Photograph: Craig Brough/Action Images/Reuters]