For about an hour in Paris, it looked like we were finally going to have a different conversation about Arsenal Women.
Alessia Russo scored her first goal of the season, Georgia Stanway scored her first Arsenal goal and, at 2-0 up, Arsenal appeared to be finding some of the attacking answers we’ve spent the last few weeks looking for.
Then it unravelled.
In this episode, I work through how Arsenal allowed Paris FC back into a game they should have won, what happened to the defensive rotations we saw working so well in pre-season and why I’m becoming increasingly confused by some of Renée Slegers’ squad decisions.
We also need to talk about Selina Cerci and Géraldine Reuteler. I also address one important question around Géraldine: she is fit, ready to play and there are no injury concerns preventing Arsenal from using her. So why are we barely seeing her?
Then there’s that extraordinary late penalty. I’ve checked the law, we’ll work through what the referee appears to have seen and why, despite how bizarre the incident was, I don’t think Arsenal can use it to explain away the result.
And with Manchester City coming on Sunday, we finish by separating what we know about Arsenal’s current problems from some of the much bigger claims being made online, particularly for those younger supporters who might be feeling pretty worried about their team right now.
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