As Jonas Eidevall has been trying to build his Arsenal Womens dream team, which he pictured when he took over in 2021, I would imagine that in that dream the Arsenal Women coach saw Frida Maanum as a playmaker.
Personally, I think he would seen that dream already fulfilled if we hadn’t seen nearly every single one of our top players destroyed by injuries, including FOUR long term ACL victims.
But earlier this season, Eidevall had an idea of exploiting Frida Maanum’s attacking potential, which saw him give her the attacking midfielder role.
In her new role, Maanum seems like a different player; she’s now empowered and scoring goals galore. Coming into this season, nobody knew Frida would be the goal source Eidevall could tap, but she’s been that; she’s got 8 goals and 2 assists in 18 league games, and another 7 in our cup runs, including 5 in the Champions League run to the semi final.
On Friday night, when the Arsenal women needed someone to step up and ensure the WSL winning streak against Leicester persisted, she did just that, scoring the only goal that saw Arsenal beat Leicester 1-0.
Notably, after the game, Eidevall only had kind words about her midfielder, saying, “Incredible, that versatility She starts as a six, and then she comes up as a 10. That is what you see when you play her as a six; she does that well, but you really see what you’re missing when you don’t play her as a 10. She is so good in front of their defending line — the power, her touch, the way she engages defenders. If you don’t step to her, she shoots. Then it becomes a really hard task for the defending team; if you give her space, she shoots. If you step up to her, it creates space and frees another player. That is exactly the type of decision we want to force from the opponent.”
Right now it is looking like Frida Maanum deserves to be named Arsenal women’s player of the season. Who agrees?
Michelle Maxwell
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She’s awesome