Williamson back in team training and closing in on Arsenal return | OneFootball

Arsenal Women’s boss Renee Slegers say England captain Leah Williamson is closing in on a return to action.

Williamson is yet to play this season because of a knee injury but is back in team training and Slegers says she expects her to return to the squad next month.

“Yes, so you saw her today in training with us. That’s the progress she’s making,” Slegers said.

“She’s been more and more involved with the team and team training, which is really, really positive. She feels good. She has a couple of steps to take still.

“We expect maybe somewhere in December, somewhere in the next block, we might see her again if everything goes to plan. She’s doing well at the moment.

“It’s always hard to give exact dates and exact times.

“But we hope before Christmas we would see her on the pitch again.

“We all see how hard she’s worked. She’s a player with so much quality. You see it straight away when she joined the positional game today. The way she finds passes is so good.

“She looks really good. And of course, we’ve missed her as a leader as well. She brings a lot of presence, composure, solutions to the team.

“So, yes, it will be really good to get her back.”

Arsenal take on north London rivals Tottenham on Sunday looking to bounce back from their 3-2 Champions League defeat to Bayern Munich.

“The first half against Bayern, I think we do a lot of really, really good things,” Slegers said.

“But then, of course, we’re not happy with the second half, how we don’t manage that second half.

“So that’s not good enough. So that’s really disappointing. And we’ve acknowledged that as a collective.

“So everyone involved and everyone is taking responsibility. So that’s good. And actually, we had a really good session out on the pitch today with lots of energy.

“The players will use this as fuel going into the north London derby.”