Arsenal Women Pre-Season 2026/27: Inside the La Manga Training Camp

Arsenal Women are in Spain, pre-season is properly underway now and, naturally, before we'd really got going, we had our first inquisition of the week because there seemed to be quite a lot of concern about whether Leah Williamson had actually made it onto the plane to La Manga.

She had, so we can all calm down.

There were photographs being examined, people trying to work out who they could and couldn't see and various theories going around as to whether Leah had travelled. I think at one point we were probably going to be looking at someone actually enhancing a reflection in an aeroplane window to see if she was there, but I can assure you Leah is there. We've seen her. She appeared in the second set of photographs released by the club, so mystery solved.

Actually, when you look at what's happening in Spain alongside what happened in Arsenal's first pre-season game against Crystal Palace, I think it helps put that match into even more perspective because this is the stage of pre-season that Arsenal are actually at. The players have only just begun playing matches again, they're now away together at a training camp, Renée Slegers and her coaching team are working with new signings and young players alongside footballers who've been here for years, and everyone is at slightly different stages of getting themselves back to where they need to be physically.

We sometimes look at pre-season and instinctively apply the rules of a competitive match to it because, well, it's football. There are two teams, somebody keeps score, we're Arsenal supporters, so obviously we would like Arsenal to win. But the more I've been thinking about it since that Crystal Palace game, the more I think we have to remember that the match is almost one part of a much bigger training programme at this point before the season kicks off.

This week in La Manga will be about fitness, conditioning, tactical work and building relationships between players, giving Renée an opportunity to look at different combinations and giving the new players an opportunity to settle into the group. There'll be physical loads being managed and players doing different amounts of work depending on where they are individually, and some of what Arsenal are working on quite deliberately won't be there for us to see yet.

And I think that's worth remembering because there's been an enormous appetite for information around Arsenal already this summer. Who's training? Who's travelled? Who played in the first half against Crystal Palace? Who played in the second? What formation did we use? Why wasn't somebody in a particular photograph?

Sometimes the answer is simply that we don't know.

That's particularly true of the Crystal Palace game because it was played completely behind closed doors. We know Arsenal changed the entire eleven at half-time because the club told us that, but Arsenal haven't published two complete team sheets and there's been nothing from Crystal Palace that gives us that information either. I could try to piece together a hypothetical eleven from the names mentioned in the two match reports, but then I'd be taking assumptions and presenting them to you as factual information, and that's not something I want to do here on Trailblazers.

There's also a perfectly sensible reason why some of what Arsenal are doing at the moment isn't for us to see. Pre-season isn't just about getting everybody running around again. Coaching teams are beginning to work on tactical ideas, patterns of play, combinations, set pieces and all sorts of things they might not particularly want their opponents watching before the season has even begun. Do we really want to give any clues to Manchester City, Chelsea or potentially London City Lionesses about how this new-look Arsenal is going to set up and play?

I don't really, and it's probably going to be the same for them as well.

That doesn't mean every behind-closed-doors friendly is some kind of top-secret tactical operation and we've got a bunch of bodyguards standing at the gates of the Sobha Realty Training Centre with Men in Black-style neuralyzers — and I appreciate some younger readers might not even know what that reference means — but there are perfectly boring reasons why a club might decide that a particular training match is for the players and coaching staff rather than for public consumption.

Sometimes we just have to live with not knowing everything that goes on. Trust me, I know how that feels. I'm a fan as well. Although I do appreciate that it's slightly inconvenient when you've decided to start an Arsenal Women publication.

What we do know is what happens next.

After the training camp in Spain (during which they'll play a behind-closed-doors friendly against AC Milan), Arsenal return to Meadow Park at the Mangata Developments Stadium for their final pre-season matches later this month, and these should give us a much better opportunity to begin seeing how things are developing as we get closer to the start of the 2026/27 season.

First up is French Première Ligue side Paris FC on Sunday 23 August, with kick-off at 1pm.

Three days later, on Wednesday 26 August, Arsenal will play newly promoted WSL side Charlton Athletic, again at Meadow Park, with that game kicking off at 7pm.

Tickets for both matches are on sale. I got the notification at around 11 o'clock on Monday morning and managed to get online about 20 minutes later, and there were tickets available at that stage but they were going really, really fast, so depending on when you're reading this they may well have sold out. But have a look and see if you can bag one.

I'm not going to the Paris FC game, but I will be at Meadow Park for Charlton on the Wednesday night, so if you're going as well, let me know. Come and say hello if you see me there.

One question I've already been asked by Ciara Mallon - Head of the Irish Trailblazers, an entirely official position that I might have invented, but she's got the job now - is whether either of these matches will be televised or streamed.

And at the moment, I don't know.

I've looked and searched and, at the time of writing, I don't have any confirmed broadcast information for either Paris FC or Charlton. I'm not going to speculate, but I'll keep an eye on it and the moment Arsenal confirm whether either or both games are going to be streamed or televised, I'll get that information out.

I've obviously got a particular interest in finding out because although I'm going to the Charlton game, I can't make the Paris FC match, and I'd quite like to cover it without having to develop the ability to be in two places at once.

I hope we do get to see both games though, because by that stage Arsenal will have had the Crystal Palace match, the training camp in Spain and another couple of weeks of work together, so those matches should give us a much better opportunity to start looking at how things are developing.

I'm especially interested in seeing Lisa Baum live now for obvious reasons after she scored in that Crystal Palace game. We've talked quite a bit already about the sort of player Lisa appears to be and some of the characteristics in her game, but there's only so much you can learn from footage and reports. Watching her within this Arsenal team, even in pre-season, should begin to tell us a little more.

I'm also really interested in seeing where some of the younger players are going to fit into Renée's thinking as we get closer to the start of the season. We talked recently about the pathway for Arsenal's young players and why opportunities matter, and this is precisely the sort of period when Renée can look at them alongside established internationals without every decision carrying the consequences it will once the WSL begins.

So while there will inevitably be results to discuss over the next few weeks, I'm probably going to be much more interested in what we begin to notice around them.

Who is getting minutes? Which young players continue to be involved? Where are the new signings being used? What combinations does Renée keep returning to? What starts to look deliberate rather than experimental?

And, yes, Arsenal are in La Manga.

Leah Williamson is definitely there.

Nobody needs to send out a search party.

The players are working, the new signings are settling in, Renée has time on the training pitch with this group and, once they return from Spain, we've got Paris FC at Meadow Park at 1pm on Sunday 23 August followed by Charlton Athletic at 7pm on Wednesday 26 August.

Pre-season is properly underway.

We don't know everything that's happening inside that training camp, and I suspect Arsenal would rather keep quite a lot of it that way.

For now, I'm quite happy to let them get on with it.