Arsenal Women Aren’t Just Building A Better Squad. They’re Building A Winning Culture.

One of the most interesting things I read over the last couple of days was a really good piece by Suzanne Wrack in The Guardian looking at Arsenal’s summer recruitment and, more importantly, what all of these new signings tell us about where the club thinks it’s heading next.

If you haven’t read it yet, I’d really encourage you to go and have a look because Suzanne spent time speaking to players including Lotte Wubben-Moy and Georgia Stanway, as well as Arsenal’s Technical Director Jodie Taylor, and there was a common thread running through all of those conversations that really got my attention.

Winning the Women’s Super League. That’s the priority.

Lotte Wuben Moy probably summed up Arsenal’s current mindset better than anybody when she spoke about how much the club has changed over the last few years. She said that change is inevitable in women’s football and that if you speak to a player "who isn’t nimble", then you’ve probably found somebody who isn’t built for the modern game. What I found really interesting though was that she wasn’t only talking about the players. She spoke about the whole football club becoming more adaptable. The coaching staff, boardroom, commercial team and communications department- everyone moving together with the changing tides of women’s football instead of trying to resist it.

I thought that was a fascinating way of looking at it because, when you think about it, Arsenal have changed so much over the last few seasons.

We’ve seen big players arrive and leave. We’ve changed managers. We’ve watched standards rise across the Women’s Super League almost every single year, but Arsenal don’t seem to be reacting to those changes anymore; they seem to be anticipating them.

Lotte also admitted that if you’d asked her about so much change four or five years ago, she’d probably have found it quite intimidating, whereas now she sees herself as somebody helping to drive that change forward. I think that tells you a lot about where this group is mentally because it no longer feels like a squad trying to protect what it already has. It feels like a squad that’s actively trying to become something even better.

Georgia Stanway’s comments really reinforced that feeling for me.

She explained that Arsenal had shown interest early, stayed loyal throughout the process and wanted to sign her even when she wasn’t immediately available. I think that’s a bigger compliment than it perhaps sounds because elite footballers don’t just want clubs to come calling when the timing is convenient. They want to feel genuinely wanted, and Georgia openly spoke about that.

She also said something else that stood out to me.

After four hugely successful years at Bayern Munich, she wasn’t simply looking for another club. She wanted the next step in her career. She wanted to improve her game further, and she wanted to play alongside world-class footballers.

Think about that for a minute.

This is already one of Europe’s best midfielders talking about Arsenal as the place she believes will help her become an even better player. That sends a powerful message.

Suzanne also spoke to Arsenal’s Technical Director Jodie Taylor, who gave a really interesting insight into how difficult modern recruitment has become. She explained that the market is constantly changing, the pool of elite talent is relatively small and that several clubs are all trying to sign the same players. Sometimes you have to plan years ahead, while at other times you have to react quickly because an unexpected opportunity suddenly appears.

I smiled when I read that because it mirrors something we’ve talked about quite a lot here on Trailblazers over the last few weeks.

Arsenal aren’t simply signing players because they fill a position.

They’re building variety, different profiles & qualities. Different solutions to different footballing problems.

Jodie even spoke about wanting Arsenal to become less predictable, and I think we’ve already started to see that through the players who’ve arrived this summer. Georgia Stanway brings something different to Kim Little. Selina Cerci offers a different profile to Alessia Russo. Misa Rodríguez gives Arsenal qualities in how we can build from the back that differ from the goalkeepers already at the club. Lisa Baum represents investment in the future, while Ona Batlle arrives with years of experience winning at the very highest level.

None of those signings is identical and so they can solve a host of different problems for us.

Collectively, they make Arsenal a more complete football team.

Then we had another interview with Renée Slegers, and once again I found myself, as ever, listening less to what she was saying about individual signings and much more to the language she chose when she talked about the squad as a whole.

Renée spoke about how the standard in the Women’s Super League continues to rise every single season. She referenced the draws (not directly, but it wasn't hard to guess) against Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur last year, results that ultimately proved hugely costly in the title race, and made it very clear that Arsenal now want to become the team most capable of winning the league.

That’s what I keep coming back to; whenever Renée speaks now, I’m not really listening for whether she says she’s happy with the transfer window because she’s hardly going to come out and say she isn’t. What interests me much more is the way she talks about competition, development and the different roles players have within the squad because those little clues tell us a lot about how she intends to manage this group once the season actually starts.

And yes, I do think she’s going to be ruthless... not ruthless in a negative sense, but ruthless in the sense that if somebody else gives Arsenal a better chance of winning on a particular day, they’ll play.

We’ve already seen enough from Renée over the last eighteen months to know she’s prepared to make difficult decisions if she believes they’re in the best interests of the team, and I actually think that’s one of the reasons this squad feels so healthy at the moment. Everybody knows where they stand, and everybody understands that places have to be earned.

It’s been a huge summer.

Like a lot of supporters, I’d still love Arsenal to bring in one more top-class centre-back before the transfer window closes because I think that’s the one area where we’re still a little light, particularly given Leah Williamson’s recent injury history and the fact we've lost some depth with Laia Codina's departure.

Beyond that though, when I look at this squad, I don’t really see a group preparing to just compete at the highest levels. I see a group preparing to win the Women’s Super League, the Champions League and the FA Cup.

Personally, when I look across the WSL at the squad building and changes going on at other clubs, I think we have to be among the favourites.

The Champions League is always incredibly difficult because the margins are so fine and there are several outstanding teams in Europe capable of winning it. I think Arsenal can certainly go deep into the competition again.

Domestically though, I don’t think competing is enough anymore. This squad has been assembled to win and after listening to the players, the manager and the people responsible for building this football club over the last few days, I get the impression that everyone inside Arsenal knows it too.