Arsenal Women walked away 2-0 winners at the weekend, after dominating Liverpool in what was somewhat of a revenge game, from the first game of the season where we unfortunately fell short and lost 1-0 at a packed Emirates Stadium. But our Arsenal Women showed exactly how good they are, and how much they’ve been able to improve since then. A lot of that comes down to the fact we’ve brought in some great talent and we got some of our best players back from injury, including Dutch international & WSL all-time top-scorer Vivianne Miedema.
Miedema was such a massive part of our Gunners squad before she injured her ACL, and was left to miss out of the rest of the season and the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023. She spent several months recovering from such a horrible injury, and has made it very clear how hard the journey was for her to get back to full fitness. It was amazing to see Viv come back late last year and, although she has been great since coming back, the game against Liverpool at the weekend really felt like she had reached a milestone and was back to her best.
In the second half she came out and looked ready to go, looking full of confidence. After a great run from Arsenal’s newest recruit, Emily Fox, she spotted Miedema running into the middle and passed the ball through to her. Miedema took a quick look up to see where the Liverpool keeper was and fired a rocket towards goal, that was unstoppable. Watching her smashing the ball into the back of the net, you could tell just by her celebration, the relief that came over her, and also the fact her teammates were ecstatic for her.
It’s clearly been a hard road for Miedema, and an ACL can be one of the loneliest injuries you can get in football. Although she had Beth Mead there beside her, going through the same thing, they were at different stages of their recovery. You can tell that Miedema had a tougher time of things and, for us Arsenal fans, it was incredible to see her back scoring worldies like old times.
In her post match interview, she made it clear how important it was to score, saying “To be honest, I don’t really think I celebrate goals but all the girls came up to me and they were taking the mick out of me because they were like ‘You were actually celebrating'”.
“It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been feeling really good in training, I’ve been scoring a lot of goals, but to then do it here, obviously in the league again, it’s a really nice feeling.
“A lot of the girls came to me straight after [scoring]. They all realised that I was not going to run back and it just makes it special and I think as much as obviously football’s about winning, moments like these, we do need to celebrate and definitely enjoy.”
A massive milestone for Miedema herself and a big boost for our Arsenal Women going forward. If the worry is gone and she can just get back to doing what she does best, she will soon be flying!
What’s your thoughts Gooners?
Daisy Mae
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