Arsenal Women 2-3 AC Milan: What We Learned From the La Manga Friendly

Arsenal Women have played another behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly, this time against AC Milan Women in La Manga. We lost 3-2 and, almost inevitably, I’ve already started seeing some of the comments appearing online asking how Arsenal can possibly lose to what someone described as a mediocre team from a rubbish league.

And apparently we’re going to have this conversation all over again because we did this after Crystal Palace, didn’t we?

Arsenal went 1-0 down in their first pre-season friendly, some people immediately started worrying about our defence and whether we desperately need to sign another centre-back, and we talked about why you can’t judge the state of a football team from a match none of us actually watched, particularly when it’s the first pre-season game they’ve played.

Well, a few days later we’ve got another result from another behind-closed-doors match that none of us watched and we’re going to do pretty much the same thing. So rather than looking at Arsenal 2, AC Milan 3 and deciding that this tells us everything we need to know about Arsenal’s chances this season, let’s actually look at what Arsenal have told us happened because I think there’s quite a lot in this match to be encouraged by, and also one or two things Renée Slegers and the coaching team will presumably be very happy to have discovered now rather than when the WSL season begins.

Before we get into the match itself, there’s some context here which I think is really important. This was the final part of Arsenal’s training camp in La Manga and the club specifically described the conditions as scorching. The players haven’t travelled to Spain, spent a few days lying beside the swimming pool and then popped out for a friendly before coming home. They’ve been there to work. They’ve been training, building their fitness and physical conditioning, Renée is working on tactical ideas and combinations, we’ve got new players integrating into the squad and we’ve got academy players out there getting involved as well. Then, at the end of all that, you’re playing a football match in the Spanish heat which, trust me, is no joke. Half my family are based out there.

AC Milan are also further into their pre-season programme. Let me repeat that. AC Milan are further into their pre-season programme than Arsenal are. Milan began their preparations on 10 July, over a month ago. They’ve already had their own training camp and their first competitive match is on 22 August, so they’re preparing towards a competitive game that’s arriving a lot sooner than Arsenal’s opening WSL fixture.

Does any of that mean Arsenal should want to lose to AC Milan? Of course not. I’m sure Renée wanted to win and I’m sure the players wanted to win as well. I’m an Arsenal supporter. I wanted them to win and I wasn’t even there.

But context matters. 

So what actually happened?

According to Arsenal’s official report, our first chance came through Georgia Stanway, who plucked a stray Milan clearance out of the air, drove towards goal and found Olivia Smith. And there’s a name we’re going to hear a lot as we go through this match.

Stanway and Smith combined again, with a chance almost falling to Lisa Baum in the box before the Milan goalkeeper got there. Then, after 25 minutes, Milan took the lead through Thea Kyvag after what Arsenal describe as some confusion at the back.

Arsenal also specifically described that goal as coming against the run of play. That doesn’t mean we ignore the confusion at the back, of course we don’t. If Arsenal have made a mistake defensively, Renée and her coaching staff will look at it and presumably they’ll want to understand what happened. But if we’re trying to build some picture of a game we haven’t actually seen, the fact Arsenal were apparently having the better of the play before conceding is relevant.

And Arsenal certainly seem to have created opportunities afterwards because Alessia Russo hit the crossbar with an aerial effort. Stina Blackstenius hit the crossbar as well. Kim Little had a volley smothered by the goalkeeper.

So Arsenal go into half-time 1-0 down, and somebody looking only at the scoreline could quite reasonably think Milan had been the better team. But based on the information we actually have, that does not appear to be what Arsenal are describing at all. It seems we were two or three centimetres away in each action from being 3-1 up at half-time. 

And this is why I’m going to keep banging this drum throughout pre-season, probably until you’re all completely sick of me saying it.

We have to separate the result from the performance, particularly when we haven’t even seen the performance.

The second half begins, Arsenal say they increase the intensity - which is no surprise, we all know what Renée’s team talks can be like - and it doesn’t take them long to get the equaliser. Olivia Smith delivers a powerful corner towards the front post and Leah Williamson rises to head home.

Which is quite funny, really, because we started the week with everyone examining photographs trying to establish whether Leah Williamson had actually got on the plane to La Manga in the first place.

Obviously she definitely did.

She’s scored now. Case closed.

But Olivia Smith interests me here because when you look back through Arsenal’s description of this game, she seems to have been involved a hell of a lot. She’s involved with Georgia Stanway in that first opportunity, they link up again shortly afterwards, she delivers the corner for Leah’s goal and then about ten minutes later she apparently dances through the Milan defence, which we’ve seen her do time and time again at the Emirates, before she’s brought down outside the penalty area.

We’re obviously working from a written match report here, so I’m not going to turn that into some enormous tactical conclusion about Olivia Smith’s season, but it’s something I’m really taking note of. She’s heavily involved and she’s creating things, and as we get more pre-season football, these are little patterns I’m really interested in watching to see if they continue.

Then we’ve got something else that I really love from this match. Kyri Teer-Hutchins, Amelia Marriott, Abi Conway and Bella Cowley all get minutes, and Arsenal specifically make the point to mention the contribution those academy players made alongside established members of the squad.

We’ve talked about the Arsenal pathway a lot recently and about what opportunities actually look like for young players at a club where the senior squad is now incredibly strong. Well, this is part of it. This is exactly what pre-season can give Renée Slegers and the coaching team. She’s got young players on a pitch alongside established internationals, she’s seeing how they cope, how they combine with senior players and how they respond to playing against a professional European side.

That information is so useful to her and the coaching staff, and I’m far more interested in that at the moment than whether Arsenal’s pre-season record says two wins or one win and one defeat.

Milan then go ahead again after 70 minutes through Sara Stokic, who scores on a breakaway, curling a powerful shot past Isabella Damm. Again, that word ‘breakaway’ is really important because now we’ve got a picture, albeit an incomplete one, of Arsenal apparently having a lot of the ball, pushing for goals and Milan being able to hurt them when possession turns over.

That’s something Renée can look at.

And I just want to make a point here because a lot of fans were screaming for us to be playing this type of football where we continuously drive the ball forward towards the opposition’s danger zone and towards their penalty area, rather than continuously passing the ball back, which we were accused of doing a lot, particularly in those games against Tottenham, Manchester United and Manchester City that we either lost or drew.

So they’re obviously looking at that and it’s obviously something they’re experimenting with. And look at the profile of the squad and how it’s changed. You’ve got really direct, driving players like Georgia Stanway, Selina Cerci and Olivia Smith — we know that’s something Olivia does anyway.

We should be celebrating the fact that this is happening. The failing to retain possession and conceding the turnover is something the coaching staff will look at really, really carefully. It’s not that they just play this game, get back on the plane and say, well, we lost. They are going to be scrutinising this over and over and over.

Isabella Damm was in goal and this is her first competitive game, in blazing heat. Have you ever been a goalkeeper standing between the sticks when it’s 35, 38, 40 degrees?

Good luck.

A few minutes later Damm makes what Arsenal describe as a great double save to stop Stokic scoring again, which is another useful moment for a young goalkeeper in pre-season, showing off her reactions and her athleticism there.

Then Arsenal start trying to turn what the club describes as their dominant possession into another equaliser.

And this is where Selina Cerci enters the story, which is very convenient because I’m supposed to be doing a full Trailblazers player profile and deep dive on Selina very shortly, and she’s decided to give me some new material.

Thank you, Selina. I appreciate you so much.

Chloe Kelly, who makes me very happy, delivers a deep corner and Cerci gets on the end of it with a bullet header.

Crossbar.

So at this stage Alessia Russo has hit the crossbar, Stina Blackstenius has hit the crossbar and now Selina Cerci has hit the crossbar.

And I appreciate hitting the crossbar does not get you even half a goal. I’m not trying to invent a new scoring system where actually Arsenal won this game three and a half to three, but if we’re asking whether Arsenal were creating opportunities, it is highly relevant.

Cerci doesn’t have to wait very long anyway because she then scores her first goal in Arsenal colours with what Arsenal describe as a superb strike from outside the area.

I am so, so pleased about that, and all Arsenal Women fans should be too.

Partly because you always want a new striker to get their first goal as quickly as possible, even if it’s just in a friendly, because now it’s happened. She’s put the ball in the back of the net wearing an Arsenal shirt. But also because it’s another glimpse of what Selina Cerci might give us.

I’m deliberately not going to go too far into that because we’re going to spend much more time getting to know her properly soon, but a bullet header that hits the crossbar followed by a goal from outside the box isn’t a bad little contribution to leave La Manga with. 

So now it’s 2-2. Arsenal have come back from behind twice.

And then we concede almost immediately from the restart.

Monica Renzotti scores for Milan seconds from time and they win the match 3-2.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I love that. You’ve just got yourself back into the game at 2-2 and then you immediately concede. In a competitive match, if this was the WSL or the Champions League, we would be very, very annoyed by it, and I’d imagine Renée will look at it carefully because game management and concentration after scoring are things that really, really matter.

But I’d much rather Arsenal discover something they need to work on in a behind-closed-doors friendly in La Manga than discover it away at Brighton in the first game of the season when there are three WSL points available.

That’s what these games are for.

So yeah, Arsenal lost 3-2 to AC Milan.

I’m not going to tell you that doesn’t matter at all because otherwise, why bother keeping score? But I’m also not going to tell you that it means Arsenal aren’t ready for the season or that something has suddenly gone terribly wrong.

What can we actually take from the information Arsenal have given us?

Alessia Russo hit the crossbar, Stina Blackstenius hit the crossbar, Selina Cerci hit the crossbar and then scored her first Arsenal goal. Leah Williamson scored. Olivia Smith created the equaliser and appears from the report to have been causing Milan a lot of problems. Isabella Damm made a very good double save. Four academy players got valuable minutes alongside senior internationals.

Arsenal apparently had dominant possession late in the game, fought back from behind twice and lost to a goal scored seconds from time. They’ve also come to the end of a training camp in scorching hot conditions, and Renée Slegers now knows more about this group of players than she did when they arrived in Spain.

That seems very, very useful to me. 

And just as we talked about after Crystal Palace, none of us actually watched this match. So if you’re reading anyone online saying Arsenal were terrible, or are terrible, or are going to be terrible, I’m not entirely sure how they know anything.

Equally, I can’t tell you that Arsenal were brilliant.

I don’t know.

I’ve got exactly the same information as you have, which is Arsenal’s match report. I’m just trying to look at what that information actually tells us rather than filling in all the bits that we can’t see with make-believe.

There are obviously things to work on. There was confusion at the back for the first Milan goal, they were able to score on a breakaway for the second and Arsenal conceded almost immediately after equalising for the third.

Renée will have seen all of that.

That’s considerably more useful to her than it is to anyone on social media typing, ‘Please don’t tell me we lost to a mediocre team in a crap league.’

And while we’re on that, I don’t particularly like dismissing other women’s leagues and women’s teams like that in any way, shape or form. AC Milan are a professional Serie A Women side. They’ve been in pre-season longer than Arsenal and their competitive season starts before ours does. They’re preparing for their season just as Arsenal are preparing for ours.

You don’t have to pretend Milan are Barcelona to accept that playing them in Spain is a useful pre-season exercise.

But now Arsenal come back home.

Next up we’ve got Paris FC at Meadow Park on Sunday 23 August and then Charlton Athletic on Wednesday 26 August - I’ll be going to that one, so hopefully I’ll see you there - before the WSL campaign begins away at Brighton.

By the time we get to those Meadow Park matches, Arsenal will have had the Crystal Palace game, a full training camp in La Manga, this AC Milan game and more time together on the training pitch back at Colney. That’s when I think we’re going to start being able to look a little bit more closely at what Renée is building.

For now, I’m looking at the players getting minutes, the young players getting opportunities, the signings beginning to contribute and the little patterns between players, the relationships and the chemistry starting to emerge.

I’m definitely looking at Olivia Smith.

I’m certainly looking at Selina Cerci.

And I’m delighted that Leah Williamson was, after all, on the plane and she got a goal.

Arsenal Women lost a pre-season friendly 3-2.

We’ll be okay, Gooners.