Arsenal v Chelsea 46,881 / Chelsea v Arsenal 4,850 as Blues celebrate WSL ‘sell-out’ by Michelle
Arsenal Women head to a sold-out (4,850 capacity) Kingsmeadow stadium on Sunday 21st May, kick-off 12.30 UK, to face Chelsea in their penultimate game of the Women’s Super League season. In the reverse fixture in January 2023, Arsenal welcomed Chelsea to Emirates Stadium with an officially recorded attendance of 46,881.
Where is the consistency in that for women’s football? Where is the consistency across the big clubs, that should be leading the way? Why aren’t Arsenal travelling to Stamford Bridge for such a key fixture? Why aren’t Chelsea Women pushing to play at the Bridge? Or are they not being heard by the club?
It would seem, as per the official Chelsea club tweet below, that the Blues are happy to celebrate the fact that Kingsmeadow is sold-out, but Arsenal will only receive an allocation of 600 unreserved standing tickets for the match. Better be quick on this one Gooners! Tickets available to purchase here from 10th May 2pm.
Gooners, if you can’t get tickets – which is highly likely! – don’t worry, you can watch the match live as it will be broadcast on BBC2..
Tickets for our final home game of the season against Arsenal at Kingsmeadow have sold out! 😍
Thank you for your amazing support, Blues! 💙 pic.twitter.com/MxbPbePWmD
— Chelsea FC Women (@ChelseaFCW) May 6, 2023
Last week, on Monday 1st May, Arsenal played to a sold-out Emirates Stadium, when they suffered a narrow 4-5 aggregate defeat to Wolfsburg in the UWCL semi-final. Four days later, on Friday 5th May, our Gunners welcomed Leicester City to a sold-out Meadow Park. Speaking about going from a sold-out Emirates (60,063) to a sold-out Meadow Park (4,500), Eidevall told Arseblog after the Leicester match:
“For me, personally, I enjoy being at the Emirates in front of 60,000 and I enjoy being here when it is full, I enjoy fine dining but I also like a place with greasy food and a cold beer as well. I can do both! That is what you need to do as a team, that might be a weird analogy but it’s the best one i can think of right now!”
So I guess, as our Gunners head to a sold-out (4,850) Kingsmeadow in 2 weeks time, Eidevall will be looking forward to a ‘greasy food and cold beer’ type of experience! On a more serious note though, Arsenal really are leading the way on the women’s team playing at the club stadium, and the proof is in the phenomenal attendance records the club have set across WSL and UWCL matches. When will reigning WSL champions Chelsea follow suit?
Michelle Maxwell
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I find it a strange decision by Chelsea.even on a financial level,it doesn’t make sense(they could have ended up with a sold out Bridge even it meant selling more tickets to Arsenal supporters.it also shows Chelsea priorities as a football club (men’s).I guess we should be grateful that the women’s team is really part of the club vision/family!!
They seem to have a commitment to Kingsmeadow after buying it from AFC Wimbledon. The pitch will be on the hard side as they don’t have a sprinkler system there, so more of our players stand a chance of injury.
I’m not sure that enough of our fans would make the Bridge trip to boost the numbers, even if Chelsea were in favour of it.
I hope you’re wrong regarding the pitch and Chelsea’s intentions towards our players.as if we didn’t have enough injured players already!!#ACL club
I think women football should develop naturally. Stop forcing men into accepting anything. I’m pretty sure women football will never survive without men’s contributions at the moment. Nothing artificial survives long just like the words coming out from the insufferable feminist.