Arsenal took a big step towards Champions League qualification with a comprehensive victory over Everton in the Women's Super League on Wednesday night.
Caitlin Foord got the Gunners off the mark inside 29 minutes at Walton Hall Park before Katie McCabe's stunning effort from distance saw the visitors double their lead less than five minutes later.
Foord's second of the day and a powerful header from Lotte Wubben-Moy ensured Arsenal had wrapped up the three points heading into half-time, though the win was somewhat marred by the sight of midfielder Lia Walti being stretchered off the field shortly after the interval.
While the Switzerland international will need to be assessed ahead of Arsenal's final two games of the season, the Gunners must not let yet another chastening injury blow derail the rest of their campaign. Jonas Eidevall's side will travel to Kingsmeadow on Sunday where they will take on league leaders Chelsea before hosting Aston Villa at Meadow Park on the final day of the season.
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Here, football.london takes a look at the five key talking points from Walton Hall Park.
Ruthless Arsenal show Everton no mercy
For the first 28 minutes at Walton Hall Park, there was little to separate the two sides. January signing Victoria Pelova looked perhaps the most likely candidate to break the deadlock for the Gunners as she probed Everton's defence with some tidy work down the right flank, while Aggie Beever-Jones proved herself to be a capable attacking outlet for the hosts.
The first clear chance of the game was born from a defensive error; Noelle Maritz picking the pockets of Nathalie Bjorn and threading the ball through to Caitlin Foord, who made no mistake with her smart finish. From the moment the Australian's strike rippled the back of the Everton net, it was clear there was only one side that would emerge from this clash triumphant.
Katie McCabe continued her trend of only scoring spectacular goals, rifling one in from 30 yards to double Arsenal's tally in double-quick time, before Foord notched her second of the day six minutes later. Lotte Wubben-Moy was then on hand to dispatch Frida Maanum's exquisite set-piece delivery on the stroke of half time, further compounding Everton's misery and putting Arsenal on the brink of a top-three finish.
For the second game in a row, Arsenal went into the interval four goals to the good. After a rather prosaic start, the Gunners turned on the style and won the game in a dizzying 13-minute spell. While Jonas Eidevall later bemoaned his side's display outside of that electrifying purple patch, he can be assured in the knowledge that when Arsenal are on their game, they are a match for any team in the world.
Eidevall calls for more protection
Going into half time, Arsenal were very much a side in the ascendency and looked capable of bestowing a humiliating scoreline on their hosts.
But if anything could stem the tidal wave of relentless Gunners pressure, it was the sight of yet another key player leaving the field with what looked to be a serious injury. Midfielder Lia Walti, whose importance to this Arsenal side was quite poignantly epitomised in the outpouring of elation that greeted news of her new deal last week, was stretchered off after a horror tackle from Chelsea loanee Aggie Beever-Jones.
If Arsenal's rampant attacking exploits in the latter stages of the first half could be likened to a balloon rapidly starting to inflate, Walti's premature exit was the pin that popped it, smothering the Gunners' appetite to really go for the jugular in the process. Beever-Jones, who - it must be said - looked distraught at having injured a fellow professional, was given her marching orders, but Eidevall believes the officials need to do more to protect his players.
"The red card is fair," he said in his post-match press conference. "I mean, there’s no intention of their player to injure our players, but that’s unfortunately what’s happened, with a reckless challenge like that.
"When you compound it over a whole season, there’s no team that gets fouled more often than Arsenal. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining about that but I think it compounds over a whole season.
"I just think if you want to keep the best players on the pitch, it’s important you protect them, and then the sooner you caution fouls like that, that are late and reckless and so on, the better you protect the players. And I think they [the officials] can do a little bit of a better job with that, with our eyes."
Gunners show they're made of 'good stuff'
Playing for Arsenal at the moment seems to be akin to partaking in an anxiety-inducing game of Russian roulette. Scarcely a game goes by without seeing at least one player forced off through injury.
Over the course of the campaign, four Arsenal players have ruptured their anterior cruciate ligament [ACL], while the likes of captain Kim Little, defender Rafaelle Souza and forward Caitlin Foord have all spent significant spells on the sidelines. Walti has become the latest star to see her hopes of representing her country at this summer's World Cup thrown into jeopardy, with both Arsenal and Switzerland now facing an anxious wait to discover the extent of her injury.
While the sight of Walti leaving the field on a stretcher was gut-wrenching, the scenes that followed speak volumes about the character within this Arsenal side. The players gathered together in a huddle - side-by-side, arm-in-arm - a visual embodiment of the close bond fostered within Eidevall’s squad.
“You can talk a lot about the sort of person you want to be but you don’t know until you come into this and when it matters, you show who you are,” the Gunners boss said.
“I think it was Arsene Wenger who said there is a difference in football between personality and character. In football you can talk about being one way and that’s the person you want to be.
“But football will always reveal your character, maybe not the first day but over time it will always reveal your character, you can’t hide, you will face adversity you will face challenges and the players can be very proud of the character reveal for this team because they are made of the good stuff.”
Caitlin Foord makes impressive full return
If losing Lia Walti to injury constituted the worrying nadir of Arsenal’s trip to Merseyside, Caitlin Foord’s full return to fitness represented the evening’s happy zenith.
The Australian left the field 36 minutes into the Gunners’ clash with Manchester City in early April, with Wednesday’s win marking her first WSL start in more than six weeks. And Foord wasted no time in showing the Arsenal faithful exactly what they’d been missing; her quickfire double central to the Gunners’ impressive victory at Walton Hall Park.
The brace took Foord’s tally to 11 goals for the season in all competitions, and keeping her fit and firing will be crucial for both club and country in the weeks and months to come.
Chelsea will be sterner test
Arsenal have won their last two games by an aggregate score of 8-1. Their ruthlessness in front of goal has put them on the precipice of Champions League qualification. However, with difficult games to come against Chelsea and Aston Villa, Jonas Eidevall knows his side still have plenty to improve.
“The result was really good. The performance was not very good,” he said. “We were not near that level that we need to be [against Chelsea] on Sunday. But we know that and we need to find that standard and that level and be ready for it.”
The Gunners were held to a 1-1 draw in the reverse fixture at the Emirates Stadium in January and will have to be at their very best if they want to better that result when they travel to Kingsmeadow this weekend.
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