Arsenal’s poor away record against Man City continues!
Despite a bright start by the Arsenal women against Manchester City in the Women’s Super League and, despite it actually feeling like we were going to get the win, that wasn’t to be the case by full time..
Viv Miedema yet again ensured it was a perfect start and with Arsenal’s quick start in the first few minutes, she capitalised on some defensive frailties and fired Arsenal into the lead with just over two minutes played in the tie. She found the bottom right corner of the net for her first goal in three games.
It looked like we were going to turn things around for the first time since May 2017 where we had our last win against City up in Manchester, City had won the last six games between the two sides and so it was always going to be an uphill battle.
But as always the norm for our women against the top sides became apparent again and the fast Arsenal start and dominance soon wore off and City were level on the half an hour mark. Poor defending and a mis-communication between the Arsenal keeper and the defence saw Sam Mewis head in from close range
It was chances galore in the second half – most of them coming for City – and just as it looked like we would be sharing the spoils, Caroline Weir stole the three points right at the death. We failed to clear our lines yet again and Weir struck from outside the box to win the game 2-1 for City.
After a promising start the afternoon turned into another disappointment, and as always the case for the women lately is that they take a step back after scoring and then get caught out defensively with silly mistakes that prove costly.
So it is back to the drawing board for Montemurro again, I guess to find out what he needs to beat the top teams as well as the smaller ones.
Arsenal need to bounce back and quickly. Hopefully they will do so as they have yet another week to prepare for a home tie against Everton, who are the 5th placed team and have a game in hand. Our Women will have to be better prepared and fired up, or risk losing twice in the space of a week!
Shenel Osman
Was a bummer… thought we’d get a point.
Big shout out to Beattie… was really saddened to hear about her breast cancer battle…. stay strong!
City had 18 shots, 4 on target. Arsenal had 2 shots, 1 on target. The first shot was the goal, the second one was blocked so only one shot reached the goalkeeper (or beyond) in the whole 90 minutes so a point would have been very fortuitous.