Pinpointing a make-or-break moment is not an easy or straightforward thing to do. The small margins that can define the outcome of a match makes it cruel, sometimes, to dwell on individual incidents. Those moments together, though, build up.
On the eve of Arsenal’s crunch Women’s Super League match with Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday, it feels as if the team are clinging on halfway up a mountain, facing a potential struggle to find a solid foothold with a long way still to climb. Or, even, a devastating fall.
That is how defining facing Chelsea, four games into the WSL season, could be. Win and the issues that plague the side shift on to the back burner, giving the team and manager, Jonas Eidevall, valuable breathing room. Lose and pressure, discontent and player confidence could reach untenable levels.
Eidevall was typically dismissive of the significance of the encounter with the WSL champions. “Every game that is ahead of us is a must-win game,” he said. “That needs to be the mentality that we have. Nothing else should please us, we should always go out and win football matches.”
How Arsenal have got to this point has been a long process, one fraught with inconsistency and patterns of behaviour they just cannot seem to break. The 5-2 loss to Bayern Munich in the Champions League group stage in midweek, after initially leading, coming directly off the back of a poor 0-0 draw with Everton in the league has done huge damage. The former for the defensive collapse that led to a 13-minute Pernille Harder hat-trick and the latter for the inability to break down a low block despite a hugely dominant performance. From back to front, things aren’t working.
On the loss to Bayern, Eidevall said the team were “really disappointed with how we acted the last 15, 20 minutes in the game”, adding: “I think the last two goals we concede should not happen, it shouldn’t look like that.” The manager was more stoical about the position of the team so far this season. “I think you can look at things from different perspectives,” he cautioned. “The main objective for us in pre-season was to qualify for the Champions League group stage. We’ve done that. We want to be competing all the way in the league and there is no way you can tell me that the start of the league doesn’t allow us to do that.
“We’re disappointed with the start to the group stage in the Champions League. And yes, our ambition is to go through and go to the quarter-final stage. There’s five games left in that group stage and we need to put our focus to what we have in front of us and we still have all the possibilities open to us. But as I said, we need to learn, we need to progress and of course we need to perform every single time we play.”
Chelsea are always a tough proposition, but they are yet to be tested by a top team under their new manager, Sonia Bompastor, and there have been signs of defensive fragility there too. How both centre-back pairings cope will go a long way to determining where the game is won or lost. For Arsenal, that will probably be Leah Williamson and Laia Codina attempting to handle the dynamism of Mayra Ramírez, Aggie Beever-Jones, Guro Reiten and the others that could make up Chelsea’s stellar frontline.
While for Chelsea, Millie Bright and Nathalie Björn’s performances at the back will be key, Arsenal will probably be relieved to face a team that will not set up in a low block. Additionally, how both sets of players provide support to those backlines will be critical.
Eidevall is confident. “Training has been really good today, the players have been really focused and they are determined to put absolutely everything we have on the pitch tomorrow,” he said.
“I have a really good group of players and staff, they are resilient and bounce back from performances we are not happy about. We learn and progress as a team. What is important now is to think about the future, think about what we have ahead of us. We know what we need to do and that is always a good starting point, now it is up to us to do it.”
The problem is Arsenal have started the season on the back foot, and it doesn’t look like they have the capacity to get back on the front foot. Even if they beat Chelsea, the fundamental issues will not necessarily vanish. The mood will lift, it could mark a shift, but how long will it last? So far, consistency across performances and competitions has not been their forte.
Asked about the growing discontent, Eidevall said: “It’s hard for me to say [something] to critics because I don’t necessarily know what they are criticising, and I said before, I think the most pressure comes from ourselves.
“If I talk about me personally, I set incredibly high standards for myself and I think I’m going to be by far the fiercest critic of my performances and the team performances. And pressure is not only a privilege, I believe it’s a necessity.”
