Arsenal are 10 points adrift of the Women’s Super League leaders Manchester City after a 4-2 defeat at City on Sunday, and the international break will bring a “big review” of a season that has gone wrong in its early stages — again.
The squad’s technical quality is not really the issue. What needs examining are the grit, resilience and tenacity of a group that appears unable to match Chelsea and Manchester City when it comes to the mental side of a title race. Arsenal have not won the WSL since 2019, and the questions are getting louder.
Those close to the players commonly describe the squad as a “family”: supportive of one another and full of “great people”. A general sense that the club is full of nice characters comes across in games and in interviews — polite, courteous, professional individuals anyone would be glad to call a friend. In almost any other setting that is an obvious strength. The doubt is whether it is a strength when City are the opposition.
It is hard to picture many of this Arsenal squad raising their voices in anger, and harder still to recall the last time anybody at the club engaged in so-called “housery”. The most recent candidate is Katie McCabe’s hair pull against Chelsea in last season’s Champions League quarter-final. The irony is that McCabe — combative, willing to roll up her sleeves, capable of raising her game in a hostile atmosphere — was one of the senior, influential players to leave this summer, joining Chelsea.
The numbers point in a similar direction. Last season no Arsenal player featured in Stats Perform’s list of the top 20 WSL players for percentage of duels won, and only one Arsenal player has been shown a red card in a WSL game since 2021-22. Admirable discipline, certainly, but it raises the question of whether there is enough fire in the belly.
At present the team appear to lack a dogged, refuse-to-lose character in the mould of Lucy Bronze, whose never-say-die attitude has repeatedly come to England’s aid at major tournaments, or the gritty battling spirit of Erin Cuthbert, who has helped Chelsea lift seven league titles. Taking an Arsenal example, they lack a leader of the Gabriel Magalhães type — a rock for others to lean on in tough games. None of that means there is no leadership at the club: Leah Williamson has led England to two European titles, and leaders can step up in different ways.
More recently, Renée Slegers, praising her senior players’ reaction to a disappointing draw in Paris, noted that there had been “lots of hugs” and highlighted how supportive everyone had been. It sounds like the sort of unified workplace culture millions would envy — but sometimes winning a title requires falling out, yelling, being angry and demanding higher standards.
Asked on Friday whether Arsenal had enough of a nasty edge to win the league, Slegers was defiant. “I think so, and nastiness or that grittiness, that can express itself in different ways, and I think we have certain ways in which we express that and which we can do that,” she said. “But of course, with our performances where we haven’t been at our best, you maybe don’t see those moments as much which we can bring, but we’re convinced that we can bring that to games as well, in our way, the Arsenal way, because it’s definitely there.”
Sunday offered little evidence of it in the small but significant moments. Shortly after Arsenal had twice taken a lead, City looked entirely unfazed, carrying the resolve of a team who had no doubt they would win. Part of how that belief has been instilled in the defending champions was captured in a clip released by Sky Sports of Andrée Jeglertz’s pre-match team talk, which he closed with the words: “The most important thing: we are Manchester City, we are playing at home and we are winning this game.” That matter-of-fact defiance is not easy to imagine ringing out with real conviction in the Arsenal dressing room right now — not from the players, and not from Slegers, who by all accounts is an intelligent, detail-oriented coach of whom the players are very fond.
The admirable characteristics of this Arsenal squad will serve them well in the wider world. In the meantime, the old cliché about nice guys finishing last is starting to feel uncomfortably apt.