Arsenal women season review: All roads lead to Lisbon, part 1 | OneFootball

The Arsenal Women season block by block.

Every football club season is divided by blocks of games. Each block is separated by an international break or by the winter break. This season there were six blocks. We will be looking at results by block and the main trend for the team in terms of starting XI and player rotation.

Photo by Richard Pelham/Getty Images

Obviously, the season started with Jonas Eidevall as the manager, with Renee Slegers coming in as interim when he resigned, before she was offered the job full time a couple of months later.

Arsenal made three quality signings during summer 2024. Two of them would go on to have key roles during the 2024–25 season: Daphne van Domselaar in goal and Mariona Caldentey in midfield. Rosa Kafaji, a high-potential forward, was also signed. Vivianne Miedema departed, to the displeasure of a certain section of fans. With hindsight, we can see that the club made the right choice to replace her with Caldentey. Sabrina D’Angelo and Kaylan Marckese, two goalkeepers, also departed, as well as two wingers in Chloe Lacasse and Gio Queiroz.

First block: 4 September to 20 October

Arsenal played 11 games at the beginning of the season, nine of them under Eidevall and two under Slegers as interim. The Gunners went through two rounds of UEFA Women’s Champions League qualifiers, beating Rangers and Rosenborg in the round one mini-tournament and then beating Häcken at home and away after losing the away game. In the group phase they lost 5-2 away to Bayern for what would be Eidevall’s only Champions League game-proper before departing.

At the same time, the league season did not start well either. A 1-1 draw at home to City, with some refereeing mistakes that could have changed the game, was followed by a 1-0 win away to Leicester and a 0-0 draw at home to Everton, with the usual inability to break down a low block. Then Arsenal lost at home to Chelsea 2-1, again with some refereeing errors that could have turned the game.

There was an obvious problem as the team was not performing in either competition, and Eidevall decided to resign. It was a courageous decision, as he could have waited for the club to sack him. Slegers was named interim manager.

The Guardian (USA) 10 January 2025

In that first block of 11 games played in 46 days, squad rotation was used heavily, as games were coming thick and fast and players could not repeatedly start games without risking a loading problem. A few of them had also come back from the Paris 2024 Olympics and needed to be managed early in the season.

For example, Catley was not fit and missed the first six games. Codina was a regular at centre-back, starting nine of the 11 games, with Williamson and Wubben-Moy sharing the other centre-back spot. Zinsberger started the first five games of the season before passing the baton permanently to van Domselaar.

Caldentey, McCabe, Fox, Little and Russo were clearly going to be key players, each getting at least nine starts out of 11 in that busy period. Maanum, Foord, Mead, Cooney-Cross and Walti were rotated. Blackstenius was settled in her super-sub role.

Overall, the first block was poor in terms of results, and there was no clear XI due to the volume of games played. Slegers sought to stabilise the team.

One of her early decisions, which would prove a key one, was to move Steph Catley from left-back to centre-back permanently, and it led to excellent results…