Arsenal Women Beat Manchester City 2-1, But What Are We Starting to Learn?

Arsenal Women have beaten Manchester City 2-1 in a behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly at the Sobha Realty Training Centre, and obviously I’d rather Arsenal win a football match than lose one, even when it’s a match none of us was actually allowed to watch.

But I think we need to be careful here, because a few days ago Arsenal lost 3-2 to AC Milan and I said we shouldn’t look at the scoreline from a pre-season game, particularly one played behind closed doors, and decide that something had gone terribly wrong. So now that we’ve beaten Manchester City, I can’t suddenly change the rules because I happen to like this result more.

Losing to Milan didn’t mean Arsenal were in trouble. Beating Manchester City doesn’t mean we’re definitely winning the league.

What interests me more is that we now have another game to put alongside Milan, and once you do that, you can start looking for things that happen more than once. That’s when I think pre-season becomes useful, because one moment might not mean very much, but if you keep seeing the same things from the same players, perhaps we’re beginning to learn something about this Arsenal team.

Manchester City actually seem to have started this game pretty well. Their own report says they were on top for part of the first half and describes Arsenal’s opening goal as coming against the run of play, while Arsenal’s report tells us Anneke Borbe had quite a lot to do in goal.

Khadija Shaw was put through early, and Borbe came quickly off her line to head the ball clear, Aoba Fujino tested her from a difficult angle, and then we get what sounds like the save of the match when Lauren Hemp crosses for Shaw, who hits the ball first time, and Borbe somehow pushes it onto the crossbar. Not long afterwards Alex Greenwood has another powerful effort and Borbe tips that over too.

So Anneke Borbe appears to have had a very good afternoon.

I’m glad we have that detail because there’s an obvious temptation this summer to spend all our time talking about Arsenal’s new attacking players, and there are quite a few of them to talk about, but Renée Slegers is learning about the rest of her squad as well. Borbe was facing players like Shaw, Hemp, Mary Fowler and Fujino here, so being put under pressure and responding well is exactly the sort of experience you want a goalkeeper to get during pre-season.

It doesn’t tell us who Renée will choose in goal when the WSL season starts against Brighton, but it does suggest Borbe has done herself absolutely no harm.

At the other end, Arsenal were creating chances too. Chloe Kelly found Georgia Stanway for an early shot from distance, Taylor Hinds then played Georgia through for another effort, and Kelly also found Stina Blackstenius before Arsenal eventually took the lead after 24 minutes.

The goal immediately made me think of something we saw against Milan.

Chloe Kelly takes the corner, and Stina flicks it into the roof of the net. Against Milan, another Chloe Kelly corner found Selina Cerci, who powered a header against the crossbar.

Now, two corners in two friendly matches obviously don’t mean Arsenal have suddenly invented some unstoppable set-piece routine that nobody else can deal with, but this is exactly the sort of thing I mean when I talk about looking for something happening more than once.

Chloe can deliver a very good ball into the penalty area, and Arsenal have Stina, Selina, Leah Williamson, Lotte Wubben-Moy, Alessia Russo and plenty of other players capable of attacking it. So I’m putting that one somewhere in the back of my mind for when the proper football starts.

Stina scoring also feels worth mentioning because something slightly strange happens whenever a football club signs another striker. We immediately start wondering what that means for the strikers who were already there, as though somebody has arrived at London Colney and informed Stina that Selina Cerci has signed, so unfortunately she’ll have to clear her locker by lunchtime.

Stina Blackstenius is still Stina Blackstenius.

She scores here; she has another attempt from distance, and later Alessia Russo crosses for her, and she heads over the bar, and actually that last bit interests me because I don’t think we necessarily need to look at Alessia, Stina and Selina as three players fighting for one place.

They’re all centre-forwards, of course, but that doesn’t mean Renée can only ever use one of them at a time or that they all give Arsenal exactly the same thing. I’m becoming much more interested in the different combinations she might try, and seeing Alessia creating an opportunity for Stina gives us another little clue.

Georgia Stanway appears quite a lot in the match report as well. She gets into shooting positions, combines with Chloe and Taylor Hinds and seems to be finding ways to get involved in Arsenal’s attacks already, but there’s also a moment where she gives the ball away, and Shaw gets through before Mariona Caldentey races back and stops her from getting a shot away.

I quite like having that detail because these matches aren’t supposed to be perfect and it keeps our reporting honest.

Georgia is new. She’s learning where her Arsenal teammates are going to move, and they’re learning what she’s going to do, and sometimes somebody is going to give the ball away. Better to make those mistakes now, work out why they happened and fix them before the matches actually count for points.

I also rather like Mariona making that recovery run in a behind-closed-doors friendly in August. It’s not the sort of thing anybody puts in a highlights video, but it tells you something about the work she was prepared to do when a teammate made a mistake.

City eventually equalised just before half-time through Lauren Hemp, and it sounds like a lovely goal. Mary Fowler played a long ball across to Hemp, she moved inside onto her right foot and curled the ball into the far corner.

So it’s 1-1 at half-time and I don’t think there’s any point pretending Arsenal had completely controlled the game. City had created chances, Borbe had needed to make some good saves and City themselves felt they’d been on top for part of the half.

The second half seems to have opened up a little more. Caitlin Foord hit the crossbar after combining with Stina and Chloe; Stina headed over from Alessia’s cross; Georgia had another attempt; Selina Cerci tried one from outside the area; and then Olivia Smith moved in from the left and created an opportunity for Alessia.

I keep noticing Olivia moving inside in these reports. I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what Renée is planning from a few sentences on the Arsenal website, because none of us watched the game, but I noticed Olivia combining with Georgia and getting involved from those areas against Milan too, and now we’ve got her coming in from the left and creating for Alessia against City.

So I’m filing that one away, too.

Then came a group of changes and some particularly good news. Kyra Cooney-Cross is back!

We already knew Kyra had returned to training, but now she’s returned to the pitch too. We don’t know enough to say how close she is to being completely ready or what Renée’s plans are for her over the next couple of games, but she has played again and, for now, I think we can simply be pleased about that.

Then right at the end, Arsenal found the winner.

Selina Cerci played Lisa Baum through on goal, Lisa went around Ayaka Yamashita and finished to make it 2-1. There are a couple of things I really love about that.

Lisa is only 19. She’s moved to a new country, joined an Arsenal squad full of experienced international players, and now she’s scored a late winner against Manchester City. We shouldn’t suddenly expect her to start every week because of something she did in a pre-season game, but going around the goalkeeper and finishing the chance sounds like a player staying very calm in a big moment.

And then there’s Selina Cerci.

If you’ve read my Selina profile, you’ll know why this made me smile, because I spent quite a bit of time looking at how her game developed at Hoffenheim and one of the things that interested me was that she started creating more chances for other people without losing the goals from her own game.

Then she arrives at Arsenal, scores from outside the area against Milan and, in the very next game, creates the winner against Manchester City.

I’m not going to build an enormous argument from one pass in a friendly, but it’s another little piece of information about the player Arsenal have signed. Perhaps that’s what I’m enjoying so much about this pre-season now. We’re beginning to collect pieces.

We’ve seen Chloe Kelly’s corners cause problems in consecutive matches. We’ve seen Selina threaten in different ways. We’ve seen Olivia Smith moving inside and creating. Stina is scoring and getting chances. Georgia is getting herself into attacking positions. Lisa Baum is already making an impression. Kyra Cooney-Cross is back on the pitch. And now Anneke Borbe appears to have had an excellent game while facing some of the WSL's best attacking players.

We’ve also seen Arsenal concede three goals against Milan and allow Manchester City enough chances that Borbe needed to make some very good saves.

That matters too.

Because I don’t want us to spend pre-season deciding that every good moment means Arsenal are going to win everything and every bad moment means something has gone horribly wrong. The point of these games is to find things that work, find things that don’t, give players minutes and allow Renée and her staff to learn things while the result doesn’t really matter.

A few days ago Arsenal lost 3-2 to AC Milan and some people immediately became worried. Now we’ve beaten Manchester City 2-1. If we used the same logic, we’d presumably have to decide everything is wonderful again.

Which is why maybe we shouldn’t use that logic.

The score tells us Arsenal won 2-1. The match reports tell us something much more useful: City caused Arsenal problems, Borbe responded very well, Arsenal created chances of their own, the new players are starting to combine and two of them eventually created the winning goal together.

And now we get to do something we haven’t been able to do with either of these behind-closed-doors games. We get to watch.

Arsenal face Paris FC on Sunday at Mangata Developments Stadium, and suddenly all these little things we’ve been trying to understand from written reports can become things we can actually look for ourselves.

I want to watch where Olivia Smith goes when Arsenal have the ball. I want to see where Georgia Stanway is finding space. I want to see how Selina Cerci works with the other forwards and whether Chloe Kelly’s set-piece delivery causes problems again. I want to see how Lisa Baum fits into all of this and what Renée does with the ridiculous number of attacking options she now has available.

Because while two behind-closed-doors friendlies haven’t given us many definitive answers, I do think they’ve started giving us much better questions.

And at this stage of pre-season, that’s probably much more useful.